


like a river flows

by vowelinthug



Series: smallpox [4]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Bad songs, F/M, M/M, Miscommunication, Multi, haunted pasts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-18 05:21:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14205972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vowelinthug/pseuds/vowelinthug
Summary: “It’s amazing what can happen with a simple change of perspective,” Thomas says.—Silver's only trying to have anintriguingnight, if only the people he loved could stop fucking it up. And still no one gets smallpox.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rated E for....later.

* * *

 

Silver had only been running the Three Swallows Inn for a fortnight before he was able to corral Flint and Thomas into working their nights as unpaid labor. Technically, neither of them have to pay rent anymore, but Thomas still acted like he was back in shackles, leading to Silver doing something slightly degrading to get him to stop complaining. Which turned out to be for naught, because Thomas soon realized on his own that acting as a saloon host was actually, in fact, what he’d been training for his whole life, and a month later, half the people in town now mistook him for the Inn’s real owner.

“Yes, it was lovely having you!” Thomas only sticks his head outside the front door as he waves goodbye to their final customers of the night. A light snow had begun to fall, and he only has on his thinnest jacket. “Please, come again soon and regale us some more!”

Silver sits at his piano, trying to count the day’s tabs, but he glances up when Thomas shuts the door. Thomas’s ears are pink just from the brief moment outside, and a few flakes of snow pepper his shoulders. Flint, walking by with a handful of empty mugs, takes the opportunity now they’re finally alone for the night, to give Thomas a quick, thorough kiss.

Thomas looks no less pink when Flint walks away. He’s clenching and unclenching his recently re-broken hand. It’s a recent habit, though it still can’t close all the way and likely never will. He will, of course, always try.

“They’re a wonderfully musical people, aren’t they?” he asks, heading behind the bar. Flint has lined up the mugs on the counter to be wiped down.

“Who?” says Silver, going back to his figures.

“The Irish!” Thomas starts pouring the dregs of ale into a larger pitcher. “This may be controversial to say as an Englishman, but I’ve always been hugely fond of the Irish.”

“Careful,” says Flint drily, putting more mugs on the bar. “They might kick you out of England for saying something like that.” When he walks by the piano, he stops to press a long kiss into the top of Silver’s head. Silver thinks he’s trying not to distract him from counting, but if so, he utterly fails at doing so.  

Silver needs to figure out how to properly turn a profit from this godforsaken place, so he can hire a real manager, and give them all back their evenings together.

“What was that song they were singing?” Thomas asks the room. “It was beautiful. Like, _tra - la - loola - to - la - too - traaaa._ I can’t remember.”

“Every Irish song sounds like that,” Silver mutters, frowning at his numbers. He needs to be stricter about collecting his tabs. It’s just hard to keep track, once the pub is full. Maybe stomping on someone’s head in the middle of the floor will encourage people to pay up on time. He’ll float the idea by Flint later.

“You are so unbelievably talented,” Flint says to Thomas as he grabs a broom, “at many different things. But when you sing, it makes me question if you’ve ever before used your lungs, or if in fact you have any, and there aren’t just potato sacks hanging in your chest instead. You’re lucky everyone in here was too soused to hear you when you joined in with the other men, or else we would have had a riot on our hands.”

Thomas scowls at him. For a man who wants to be taken more seriously, the expression makes him look about twelve-years old. “ _Excuse_ me. I’m not a singer, I’m a doctor.”

“A doctor’s _apprentice,”_ Silver adds.

“And _you’re_ the singer.” Thomas leans on the bar in a way that would be better appreciated if he were facing the other way. “Come on, then, Long. Give us a tune.”

Silver knows he’s been set up, but knowing doesn’t make it any less annoying. Domesticity has weakened him. “I’m busy.”

“Oh, but you have such a lovely voice,” Thomas says, bouncing on his toes. “Please, something to entertain us while we work. While we clean up _your_ bar for no wages or thanks.” It’s an aristocratic type of argument: from flattery to a thinly-veiled threat without pausing to take a breath.

Without looking up from his ledger or lifting his quill, Silver sighs. And then he starts, “ _I came home on a Saturday night, as drunk as I could be, an’ there was a horse in the stable, where my horse ought to be._ ”

“Oh, no.” Silver can _hear_ Thomas’s face fall. “Not _that_ one.”

“ _So I says to me wife, the curse of my life_ ,” Silver sings loudly, “‘ _Explain this thing to me, whose is that horse in the stable, where my horse ought to be?'_ "

“It’s horrible, it’s a _horrible_ song, why do you always _have_ to sing such horrible songs?”

“He does this every time,” Flint says. “Why do you keep acting surprised?”

" _Oh, you're drunk you fool, you silly old fool, you're as drunk as a cunt can be. That's not a horse in the stable, but a milk-cow you can see!_ "

“I mean, _eventually_ he’d run out of these bawdy things, surely?”

Silver knows a million of these songs and more. He’ll never run out. “ _Well, I've traveled this wide world over, ten thousand miles or more, but a milk-cow with a saddle on, I never saw before!_ ”

The door opens, and in comes a gust of cold wind, a light flurry of snow and leaves, and a person. Thomas hadn’t locked the door.

Silver stops singing. He says, looking up, “Sorry, mate, we’re closed—” He stops.

In the doorway is the most beautiful woman Silver has ever seen. Snow clings to her eyelashes, her brow, the soft gray fur stole clinging to her perfectly sloping shoulders. Her dress is unlike anything seen in Boston — bright and rich, emerald green and burnt ember and black, woven in an intricate, dangerous pattern. It sits on her hips in a startling way, like spending a lifetime on a still sea and suddenly seeing the first ever wave. In her slender hand she holds the end of a thin cane of dark wood, ripped from the center of a tree from the center of a forest — as far from the sun as possible. The end, beneath her palm, is a handle as white as bone. Her hair is wrapped up in a colorful scarf, exposing the long line of her neck, the even jut of her jaw, only marred by a fresh scar running up her cheek and across her ear like marble. She has no jewelry on. In the dim light of the tavern, she looks just like her mother.

Madi lets the door shut behind her. It probably slams, but Silver doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t hear anything.

Until she speaks.

“Can you finally explain to me, “ she says, looking around, “the _name_ of this place?”

Silver thinks of every possible answer to that, to _her,_ ranging from every range of emotion he is actually capable of. Eventually, he can only settle on saying faintly, “Not really, no.”

Her lips quirk at that, stepping further into the inn. The hitch in her step is slight, almost unnoticeable except for the soft click of her cane on the dusty floor, starting and ending her walk like ellipses. As she moves, she redirects her gaze off of Silver, allowing him to breathe again, until her eyes find something else, the smile sunrising on her face, and then he can’t breathe again. She says, “ _Flint._ ”

The clatter of a broom hitting the floor, and then Silver is watching Flint surging towards her. “ _Madi,"_ he murmurs, enveloping her without hesitation, arms tight around her, beard rough on her cheek. Silver has experienced these hugs and he gets why Madi pauses for the smallest second, overwhelmed by the solidity of him, the scent, before relaxing into him wholeheartedly, burying her face in his shoulder.

“Goodness, my dear, it’s _wonderful_ to see you.” Thomas joins them in the middle of the floor, but looks unbothered when they don’t split apart right away. “I’ve been starving for decent conversation.”

Madi shifts her head so she can speak. Silver can’t see her face, but he can hear the lightness of her tone when she says, “You know I’m not much of a talker.”

“Exactly.” Thomas puts a hand on Flint’s lower back, and another on Madi’s shoulder. “Unlike these two, you let me finish a sentence before telling me I’m wrong.”

Flint pulls back finally, but keeps his grip tight on her arms, like she might slip away. It seems unlikely — it looks like he’s the only thing holding her up. Gently, he runs his hand on her injured cheek. Her smile makes his fingers twitch.

“It’s good to see you,” Flint says with a hint of amazement, because he will never stop being surprised when people don’t leave his life for good. Often in the morning, Silver will wake to see Flint watching the two of them sleeping, slack-jawed, bleary-eyed, clinging to the edges of his dreams. “Why didn’t you let us know you’d be coming?”

“It’s good to see you, too,” Madi says, avoiding his question. “Though I confess, I wish I was seeing you somewhere warmer.”

Thomas touches the hand on her cane. “Oh, you’re like ice! Come, sit by the fire.” He leads her to the heath beside the bar.

Now alone, Flint looks at Silver.

He knows he looks lost. He knows it because he feels it. He feels cut off from the throat down, like wind is whipping through him so fast it whistles between the sinew of him. He gazes at Flint, swallowing hard, hoping he’ll see what Silver needs, whatever that is. 

Flint comes over to the piano. He touches Silver’s cheek, his other hand coming down on his fist, still clutching the quill so hard it’s bent and is now stabbing the soft pad of his palm. Flint gently helps him set it down.

“Come warm up by the fire, too,” he says. Behind him, Thomas murmurs something to Madi and Silver hears her accepting it. Flint says, “This’ll keep until tomorrow.”

Flint helps him stand, simply by being near and letting Silver stand up himself. When they walk over, Madi and Thomas are sitting in the cushioned chairs reserved for the older patrons. Madi sits on one end of a sofa, but when she sees them approach, she moves down to the other end swiftly. Silver can’t tell if it’s sudden, misguided empathy for his leg, something she’d never before displayed, or she wanted to be nearer the fire and farther from him, or something else entirely. Silver sits on the other end, Flint perching on the arm of Thomas’s chair, and he watches with considerable envy as Thomas is able to casually put an arm around Flint, steadying him. He makes it looks so fucking easy. It feels like there are constantly chasms between himself and Madi, and he knows he’s the one who puts them there.

He sees the dusty mug in her hand and turns to Thomas. “Is that—?”

“It’s fresh,” says Thomas, rolling his eyes. “What am I, an animal?” He smiles at Madi. “This man put me to work in _his_ establishment, yet questions my every move. My dear, I can’t believe you’ve just arrived from a long voyage and yet still look so radiant.”

She doesn’t, is the thing. She’s beautiful, always, but Silver can see her exhaustion, the way her pains are fading her in the late hour, and knows none of it is simply from a few days onboard a ship.

Madi taps the end of her cane with a clean fingernail. She had confessed to him, before she left the last time, that she hates how charmed she is by the whitest white man she has ever met. Neither of them had met Lord Thomas Hamilton the benevolent colonist, and they understand he isn’t that man any longer  Silver, anyway, is the last person able to judge a man for changing his mind. But they still see the impression of that figure, Thomas’s own dark past, lingering around him like the smell of smoke over a field long-since razed. But new life is growing there, and that’s what counts.

Silver can see that same reluctant fondness in her face now, and it makes something crack inside him. “You’re a liar, Thomas, though an accomplished one. But I am very happy to be here.” She’s not looking right at anyone in particular when she speaks, her gaze a little off, into the fire.

Something about her voice is different, too. When Silver realizes what it is, he has to look away, too. He huffs a small laugh to keep himself from screaming.

“How did it happen?” he asks her, wanting to murmur, but knowing, now, that he can’t.

Madi jerks towards him. She meets his eyes. “What?”

“Either you’ve come all this way to look into a fire instead of us,” he says, meaning _me_ , “or you can’t hear out of your left ear.”

Madi doesn’t even have the decency to look surprised, but her smile is brief and devastating. “How did you know?”

“The scar.” Silver shrugs. “Your gaze. Your voice… It’s a little louder than I remember.”

The reality is, he notices and catalogues every disability in any person he meets, because he’s always on the lookout for them. He’s done it ever since he lost his leg, and it’s not something he can help. He hunts for the signs like a bloodhound, with no idea what to do with whatever he’s found. Just seeking the knowledge that he’s not the only one, maybe. Or looking for vulnerabilities he might exploit, before anyone can exploit his most obvious one. He’d seen the signs of gout in the doctor that first night, even when he himself had been so badly injured, which is why he set Thomas up to take his place when the man won’t be able to do the job anymore. Mr. Levine had been starting to lose his sight when Silver first started working for him, so slowly he barely seemed to notice it himself. But Silver had.

“You and that memory,” Madi says, still avoiding his initial question. “I’m pleased to see the simple life hasn’t dulled your wits.”

“Well, it’s dulled ours!” says Thomas, frowning at everyone. Flint rubs his hand idly, pressing it down into his own waist. He doesn’t look away from Madi, however, face creased with concern.

“How did it happen?” Flint repeats for him.

Madi sighs, a little sadly, a lot tiredly, shifting her gaze to observe the tavern. Silver can’t help but see it through her eyes: the low, scorched ceiling; the stains of spilt beer, old stew, candle wax on every surface; the scratched, fading wood; the lopsided, mismatched chairs. His piano, there in the corner. It had seemed so warm and familiar to him only moments ago. Even though his ownership is still relatively new, one of the reasons he even decided to take over in the first place was because of how comforting he found the Inn. He’d grown up in dark, dank male spaces like this, but they’d always been frigid, due to thin walls and biting people and the cold ocean spray. He’d never been able, as a child, as a grown man, to fully imagine anything different from this smell, this dirt, this dim — except for warmth. He always longs for warmth, and he’d thought this place had it.

Watching her take it all in, he’s not sure of anything anymore.

Looking back to the fire, voice just a hair too loud still, she says, “I was too near an explosion, and I hit my head hard. That, along with the noise of the blast… I was lucky to only lose it in one ear, a doctor told me. It’s really no bother, considering that.”

“ _Lucky?_ ” Thomas exclaims, so Silver doesn’t have to.

“Is that also what happened to your leg?” Flint asks quietly.

And Madi answers, horribly. “No.”

But then she smiles down at her cane, and sets her mug on a little nearby table. “I only need this in the cold, or when I’ve been moving for too many days. Nannie gave me it, though, and I couldn’t help but think of you boys when she did. I thought you might appreciate it.”

She grips the wood of the cane in her other hand and pulls slowly on the bone white end. She keeps pulling, until a shining blade reveals itself from inside. She holds it up, and it’s not much longer than her forearm, but it looks sharp as all hell and it looks right in her hand.

Flint barks a laugh, and Thomas awes at it, sounding like he does while reading an interesting pamphlet about changing taxation laws (which, for Thomas, means he’s overwhelmed with delight.) Madi’s teeth and the blade shine in the fire light, and Silver is _such_ an idiot. He can’t believe he ever thought this room could actually be truly warm without her in it. He smiles at her, unable to stop himself.

For the first time since she arrived, the tension leaves Madi’s shoulders completely.

“I’m very happy to see you all,” she says again, putting the sword back into the cane, still at ease, “but I arrived much later than I’d expected, and I’m afraid I need to retire for the night. You’re all living upstairs now, correct?”

“Oh, of _course_.” Thomas rises, dislodging Flint from the arm of the chair as he goes. “Why are we hanging around _this_ refuse when we have our actual home upstairs?”

“Hey—”

“Thomas—”

“I like it,” says Madi, because Silver loves her so much.

“Poor dear,” Thomas says, patting her hand. “That explosion must have addled your wonderful mind, or at least ruined your eyesight as well. Possibly also your sense of smell.” Silver had once asked Flint if Thomas only became this mindlessly offensive after all the years of imprisonment, and Flint had told Silver all about their first meeting, where Thomas had casually accused him of being a power-hungry idiot. Flint had fallen for him anyway. He’d then asked Silver if he didn’t honestly find him charming, to which Silver had found a convenient excuse to walk away and not answer.

Madi snorts. “I’m sharper than I’ve ever been, Lord Tomcat.”

Thomas splutters, glaring at Silver. “What have you been writing to her, you son of a—”

“Please, can’t you see she’s exhausted?” Silver says easily, rising to stand with them all. The shock, the confusion, the sorrow — all of it has fled him at the sight of Madi’s teeth in the glow, as simply as if he’d shed it standing up, leaving it all behind on the sofa. The thing about purposefully living without a past is that he’s never known how to stay angry for long.

“I know you three are — together now,” Madi says suddenly, and they all freeze. “A fact I am both comfortable with, and intrigued by,” she insists. “But if it’s alright with you two, I would like to be alone with Silver, just for tonight. If it’s alright with him, too.”

He’s slept with everyone in this room, but still the tips of his ears burn slightly as they all turn to look at him. “Of course,” he murmurs.

Again, the relief in Madi is palpable. She turns back to Flint and Thomas. “As long as I’m not putting you out…”

“We have plenty of space,” Flint assures her.

“Are you certain?”

“More than.” Flint touches her shoulder gently. “Go get some rest.”

To Silver, Madi and Flint smiling at each other is what he imagines the face of God might look like. It’s not something he ever thought he’d see in his lifetime, or after it, as a matter of fact. And he’s not sure he deserves to see it now, but it’s more than enough to convert a lifelong sinner to the possibility of such sweetness in the world.

And then Thomas has to ruin it by stepping over and going, “Well, my dear, have a good night. Enjoy him, we’ve kept him in excellent shape for you. Showed him a few new tricks, of course. Taught him how to do this great thing with his tongue—”

“Hey!” Silver interrupts, ears now on _fire_. “Enough, come on—”

“Be quiet, Long, and let me finish.” Thomas pauses for a second, and then continues. “What else? Oh yes —as you can see, we’ve taught him to _submit_ quite nice— Ow! Hey! That was my _nipple!_ ”

“That one,” Madi says, “he learned from me.”

“Thank you,” Flint says genuinely.

Silver hates them all. He kisses Flint quickly on the corner of his lips, knows better than to get too close to Thomas while he’s still scowling and rubbing his chest, and grabs Madi’s free hand, leading her to the back of the Inn, to the inside set of stairs. “I can trust you two to properly clean up, yeah?” he calls over his shoulder as he tugs Madi out of the room, leaving Thomas to enjoy his own rant about the immorality of unpaid labor.

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

“It’s amazing what can happen with a simple change of perspective,” Thomas says. “All one needs to do is find a new way of looking at one’s life, one’s environment, and a plethora of opportunities and ideas will become available. That paradigm shift, when discovered, can create so much unique change — night into day, water into wine. But their very nature is elusive, whereby these opportunities to alter our perception are all too often hidden from us, unless a person who has already had their perspective shifted is around to point these chances out.”

Flint hums. “That’s very interesting,” he says, “but we’re still not sleeping with our heads at the foot of the bed.” Then he hisses, as Thomas had taken a less-than-delicate bite out of the crease of his upper thigh.

Which he immediately soothes with his tongue, so that’s fine.

When Thomas is finished, he sighs and sits up, taking his feet off his own pillow. The only illumination in the room is the blue non-light of a halfmoon through the windows. The Inn overlooks the street and the building across has no second story, so while it’s highly unlikely anyone could see in, keeping the shades open is needlessly reckless. Which is why none of them have ever bothered to close them.

Thomas glares at him, though it’s undermined by the way his hand moves over Flint’s belly. “Why is it whenever we do _that_ , I’m the one who always ends up lying the wrong way around?” he asks.

Flint shrugs into his pillow. “I’m a master manipulator who’s spent a decade out-maneuvering the Royal Navy and the fiercest pirates ever to sail the high seas.”

“No, that’s not it.” Thomas’s hand trails lower. “It’s because I’m too bloody eager to get near these thighs.”

Flint shifts a little at that, but he doesn’t say anything. Both Thomas and Silver have fixated on that particular part of his body, and he doesn’t quite get it. They’re just _thighs_ , for Heaven’s sake. He loves their bodies, but there isn’t really a singular part of them he focuses on like they do his thighs.

Except maybe Silver’s hair. Or Thomas’s neck. Or Silver’s waist. And Thomas’s shoulders. And they both have smooth, perfect chests. And —

He had a point. Somewhere.

Thomas sees his discomfort and smirks at it, but then he’s moves his legs, coming closer, and then they’re both lying the right way on the bed. Flint slides a bare leg between Thomas’s, because while he might not understand the obsession, he’s willing to enable it.

But they’re both already spent for the night. It’s the closeness they’ll never tire of. In the moonlight, Thomas looks as still and cold as marble, though Flint can feel he’s anything but. He’d been stone for so long in Flint’s memory; for so long, he had seen himself as Odysseus, eager for rest after a perilous journey, far away from the sea. But now he knows he has a little bit of Pygmalion in him, warmed and wrapped around his own Galatea.

Thomas scratches at Flint's beard and says, “It was quiet in here tonight.”

“For _you_ , maybe,” Flint says, because Thomas is always loud, even when his mouth is full.

Thomas smiles once, briefly, sincerely, watching own healing hand running through Flint’s hair.

To it, he says, “Do you think he’s alright?”

Flint blinks. “Silver? Why shouldn’t he be?”

Thomas shrugs, still not quite meeting his eyes. “He didn't say much. And he looked ill, when Madi first appeared.”

Thomas likes Madi, but he doesn’t know her very well. He’s gotten a brief history of her relationship with Silver, and with Flint, but none of it has had much chance to substantiate in his mind. She’s never been here long enough. From Thomas’s point of him, Silver is always either biting and annoyed and charged with Thomas, or bright and eager and, well, also biting with Flint.

With them, Silver’s always so alive, and he’s never silent. Which aren’t really opposites to anyone but Thomas.

“That’s how he always looks at her,” Flint says finally. “The awe, the shock of her in his life. She looks completely new to him every time.”

“He looked terrified,” Thomas says.

“New things are often terrifying.”

Thomas doesn’t respond, just keeps toying with Flint’s beard and avoiding his gaze, though he looks like he’s thinking hard about what Flint said. Flint finds himself starting to smile, and struggles to keep it looking not evil.

“You’re _worried_ about him,” he says.

Thomas scowls. “Be serious.”

“You’re _concerned!_ ” Flint starts to rise. “I have to go wake him and tell —”

“Don’t!” Thomas grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him back onto the pillows. “You’re a wicked man,” he says, glaring at Flint’s unrepentant grin.

It’s the kind of off-hand phrase that would normally eat away at him, and maybe once daylight returns it will, but right now Flint’s too pleased with himself to think hard about it. “I’m telling him in the morning.”

“ _Ugh_. Why.”

Because Flint knows not a lot of people have ever cared about Silver in his lifetime. Certainly not many have told him that out loud. But to Thomas, he says, “Because he’ll scoff and try to act annoyed about it, but his ears will get all red in that way I like.”

Thomas doesn’t snort or smirk like he expected. Instead, he just looks sad, and before Flint can ask, he says in a rush, “Do you think she’ll ask him to leave with her?”

“No,” says Flint, surprised into optimism.

“How can you be so sure?” Thomas squints at him. “You thought he’d leave when he got that first letter from her.”

“I was _afraid_ he’d leave,” Flint clarifies. “You and I both know fear involves no rational thought. I don’t think she’ll try to get him to go.” Flint is mostly sure he thinks that. If he were alone right now, he’d definitely not be thinking that. But suddenly, he has to comfort Thomas about his own worst fears, which just makes him feel defensive, not afraid. “She knows what this is, what we are. She wouldn’t just ask him to go.”

Neither of them can ask, _But if she did, would he go?_

Instead, Thomas says, “She’s not going to stay here, though. I don’t know her as much as you two do, but I know that. There’s no way she’ll want to stay in Boston, not with the kind of place this is. So is it to be like this, her dropping in and out of his life at random intervals, making his face look like _that_ every time when she arrives? Making him look like _God_ knows when she goes?”

Flint holds him tighter, and even though this line of thought makes him sick to his very core, he’s a little bit in love with Thomas voicing it. He says, “That’s how it was for us, once upon a time. I’d go, you’d remain. We survived it.”

“It was _torture_ ,” Thomas says, with the expression of a man who knows a thing or two about the subject.

“But coming back,” Flint says, kissing his forehead, “was always good. And do you know, every time I came home to you? You looked at me like I was new, too.” Thomas curls deeper into him then, pressing his face into Flint’s neck. Flint says, “Whatever they decide, we’ll help them through it, and be there for both of them. And either way, we’ll still have each other.”

Thomas lets out a long sigh. It hits Flint in his throat, pooling around his collarbone like fog against a shoreline. “Okay, fine. I’ll stop worrying about it tonight. Have I ever told you that sensible is a terrible look on you?”

“Often.”

“Well, it doesn’t flatter you at all.” Thomas yawns, pulling a quilt over them both. “Will you stay here until I fall asleep, before going out and playing with your clock?”

“I wasn’t —”

Thomas flattens his hand over Flint’s chest. “This isn’t the sound of a resting heart. You won’t sleep right away, anyway, and I’d rather you be out there tinkering with your gears, than in here because I’ve gotten you into a panic. Just hold me until I fall asleep?”

It doesn’t need an answer. It’s barely even a question. Thomas doesn’t take long to fall asleep, his breathing evening out swiftly, the squeeze of his legs around Flint’s thigh slackening measure by measure as he drifts off. Thomas has always been an avid sleeper. He could sleep no matter what inner anguish or outside problem plagued him during the day. Flint used to joke that it was because he was a dreamer first and a person second. Miranda used to joke that even Thomas found himself exhausting. Thomas used to tell them to piss off and keep it down, he was trying to get some sleep over here.

Flint watches him a little while longer, the deepness of his sleep turning him back into stone. But no longer is he the flat, detail-less picture in his memory, the features all smoothed away by time. Now, the masonry is perfect for its imperfections — the scars, the stubble, the bend of his fingers, the unruly tufts of hair, the slightest rise and fall of his chest like Rome. He’s a sharp, precise, finely-carved relief, etched right into Flint’s heart.

With Thomas asleep, Flint feels his own silence like a weighted stone at the base of his spine. So quietly, he stands. He finds his breeches in the dark, and throws a spare blanket around his shoulders as he goes.

Above the Inn are two apartments, technically. Flint had changed the downstairs door to have a lock, so now it acts as their front door. They have free reign over all of upstairs, with two bedrooms, two kitchens, two parlors, and a wide hallway connecting the two. They’ve only been using one apartment since moving in, however, trying to conserve on heat for the winter. They’d let Silver and Madi use the room already warmed out of politeness, but it didn’t take too long to get a fire going in the other hearth. Sometimes Flint thinks about maybe tearing down a wall or two, although he’s not sure how to go about doing that without looking suspicious.

Living in a city had some perks — no one actually noticed your every move. Some people were surprised, though, when Silver moved above the Inn and brought along his two former landlords. But then Silver had simply spread the rumor that Flint had an ill wife he sent funds to back home in England, and then he’d happily spread the rumor that Thomas had a huge gambling problem, but was tirelessly paying off his many, many debts. Both of them required the cheapest of lodgings imaginable, and since they’d become fast friends after Silver rented out their kitchen to sleep in, it seemed only natural to return the favor once Silver’s luck changed and he found a decent job.

It’s an easy lie to maintain. When anyone asks how his wife is doing, he just has to mutter, “Same, as always.” And they pat him on the back and leave him be. And Thomas now just gets extremely angry now whenever anyone brings up gambling in front of him and refuses to talk about it, which everyone assumes is shame for his terrible affliction.  

They’re good lies, Silver tells them one night, because they’re interesting the first time they’re told, and thus memorable, but once you know it, the entertainment fades and there’s not much to hold one’s attention anymore. It’s not a hole you have to keep digging into. It’s just a fact of life.

Flint gets a little unsettled when Silver talks about lying. Thomas just looks begrudgingly impressed.

He lights a candle. Spread out on the table in the kitchen are the insides of a cheap clock. Christopher had made no great strides to teach him anything productive, so Flint had decided to take matters into his own hands. He’d bought the clock and, armed with a book, easily dismantled it with the intention of putting it back together himself. That had been almost two weeks ago.

Flint places the candle beside the open book, mindful of a pile of cogs he has no clue what to do with. Tightening the blanket around his shoulders, he gets to work.

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

 

Silver lies in bed for almost a full hour, watching Madi sleep. He’s curled up on her breast, using only the moon to peer up at her slack lips, her crown of braids cascading around her face, her scar. When his neck starts to hurt, he looks down at her belly instead, the steady up and down rhythm. It should be soothing, lulling, but instead it makes his heart race. There’s a healing bruise over her ribs, but Silver can’t tell what caused it. And Madi hadn’t said.

Finally, silently, he pulls away. He shuffles into his trousers as swiftly as he can, not wanting to shake the bed too much. On a nearby chair is his favorite shirt, although he’d never say so to anyone, and he throws it on, too.

Thomas had knitted it.

Doctor Reynolds had insisted it was a good exercise for his broken hand, and his lovely Swedish wife Margaret had showed him how to do it. Now Thomas knits all the time, and he is dreadful at it.

The shirt is unwearable in public. It’s full of holes, the stitching not nearly tight enough, and it wears low on him, almost like a nightgown. The arms are different lengths, and the neck hole is so wide it usually takes Silver a moment to figure out if it’s right side up before putting it on. It hangs off one shoulder as a result.

It had taken Thomas three weeks to make, throwing an absolute fit the entire time, and then once finished, he’d promptly discarded it. Silver had fished it out of the trash, with the intent to tease him. But the insult failed to linger as Silver continued to wear it, and Thomas’s annoyance eventually faded to thinly veiled pleasure at the sight of Silver in it.

Silver shifts a few blankets over Madi’s nude form before leaving the room.

As soon as he does, the glimmer of candlelight from the other apartment fills the hallway. It’s only a small light but against the darkness, he can see everything. Normally, the extra apartment was used for moments of privacy, when Flint wanted to work on his clocks, or Thomas wanted to study his texts, or Silver wanted to nap undisturbed. They all found each other equally distracting. But Silver is longing for a distaction now.

He stands for a minute in the doorway, just out of sight. It’s a lovely scene. After all these years, and with it not actually directed towards him for a long time now, the full breadth of Flint’s irritation and fury is a beautiful sight to behold. He’s muttering to himself as he delicately holds two pieces of metal of slightly different sizes. He consults his book, looks at his hands, looks back at the book, before throwing both pieces on the table with disgust.

“I’d ask how long you’ve been at this,” Silver says quietly, “but I suppose there’s no way of knowing.”

Flint looks up and instantly, miraculously, his frown disappears when he catches sight of Silver, instead giving him the softest smile. Then he hears what Silver said and scowls at him, though much less severe as he did before.

“Think I’m going to melt all this down,” Flint says, hoisting his blanket higher up his shoulder, “and mold it into a horseshoe. Then I’m going to buy a horse, fit it with the shoe, and let it trample a shithouse. Come, sit with me.”

The door to the other bedroom is closed, but Silver still tries to be silent about pulling the other chair closer to Flint. He sits down, leaning his crutch on the table, and immediately puts his foot in Flint’s lap. His toes feels like ice, but he knows Flint will do his part to warm them up.

True to form, as soon as Flint feels how cold his skin in, he gets to work. “I love this foot,” Flint says suddenly, massaging his arch.

“One of a kind,” Silver says, jumping as Flint applies more pressure. It feels strange — painful but pleasurable, like every moment in Silver’s life where he’d been happy.

“Well, it’s perfectly formed.” Flint lifts it up to press a scratchy kiss near his ankle. “How is she?”

“Sleeping,” Silver says, which isn’t really an answer. “She was exhausted. I mean, we still…” It makes no sense, but it feels crass to tell Flint Madi wanted to fuck first, even though Silver regularly fucks _Flint._  But she _had_ , despite her tiredness, clinging to him as she thrusted herself up to meet him, quick and hard, face pressed into his neck to keep her cries with him. She’s always like that, though. She used to do it on the island, too. Her sounds are only for Silver to hear. “And then she fell asleep right away.”

Flint raises his eyebrow. “So...she didn’t say anything?”

“No.” At first, Silver had suspected sex was just a way to avoid telling him anything, but Madi isn’t that type of person. And the way she’d stripped him, tugged him over her, held him as tightly as her arms could hold — it hadn’t felt like avoidance, but the opposite. It had felt like Madi had been having a revelation he wasn’t privy to. At one point, he realized he’d been whispering into her deaf ear. He’d shifted so he could tell her how good she felt, how beautiful she was, how much he had missed her, and she’d said, “ _Oh_ ,” in a way Silver had never heard, before finally coming, thighs like waves around him, crushing, strong, pulling him under with her.

Then she’d slid out from under him, pulled Silver to her, and had fallen asleep.  

Flint is silent, fiddling with his clock workings. Finally, he says, “What do think she’s here for?”

Silver thinks the actual answer, the only one he has — to see Silver — isn’t the one Flint is looking for. It’s only a partial truth, anyway. When she’s away from him, Silver sees nothing about himself that would draw her back. But when she returns, all his doubts shift. He’s spent most of his life tricking people into one thing or another. When Madi comes back to him, when Flint touches him, a part of him always feels the same thrill he felt when he was younger: the pride of having successfully fooled someone.

“I think she went through something,” Silver says, and touches Flint’s neck, because he can, “and we’re a way she can step back from it. Like her father always wished for, a way to escape a hardness of one’s own choosing. We’re a reprieve.”

It’s easy, to say _we._ To bring Flint into it, just then. He feels less alone that way.

“All we can hope to be, is better than our fathers,” Flint murmurs. “She came back to — us. And she didn’t do it bleeding, unlike Mr. Scott.”

“She came here _hurt._ ” Silver’s fist clenches at Flint's blanket. He’d been too shocked before to fully feel the rage, but now he does, and he hates not _knowing._ Without knowing who is at fault, all he has to blame for her suffering is Madi herself. “Christ, what the hell has she been _doing?_ ”

“What she thinks is necessary,” Flint says gently. He has always been able to understand Madi when Silver constantly fails at it.

Because that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? SIlver isn’t necessary.

Flint stops holding his foot to grab his hand. He flips it over, tracing the lines there, the rough spots, the thin scars. “She’s so like Thomas, in a way. While you’re much more like me.”

Silver knows this, but still asks, “In what way?”

“They see futures,” says Flint. “Moreover, they _think_ of futures. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but a man like you, who can’t dwell on his past, must not think often the future. Not in the long term.”

It’s been awhile since Flint brought up the story he can’t share, and Silver had been grateful for that. He opens his mouth to speak, and, as usual, there’s nothing there.

Flint’s grip on his hand tightens. “It’s okay. I told you, I’m the same. I’ve never considered futures, not when when I was a young man. Not even when I was a child, I think. Even when I was fighting to bring an end to England’s rule, envisioning what such a reality might look like, I never pictured myself there. I’ve done the one thing I never expected to do.”

Flint’s blanket is falling off his shoulders, and Silver can see the goosebumps rise, even with the warmth from the hearth. He doesn’t stop holding Silver’s hand, though, so Silver fixes it for him. “What’s that?” he asks.

Smiling crookedly, Flint says, “Grow old.” He strokes the edges of Silver’s thumbnail with a fingertip. “Every night, before I fall asleep, I think to myself, ‘Perhaps _tomorrow_ is the day it’ll all go wrong.’”

“No.” Suddenly, Silver is more sure of that than anything before. “Tomorrow we’ll be fine.”

The smile grows. “It’s a bit ironic, isn’t it?” He nods towards the broken clock. “Me, being so obsessed with time, having spent my whole life either fighting it or ignoring it.”

“Maybe you still are,” Silver points out. “Pretending in the present that there’s nothing in your past, because you don’t believe in the existence of a future, is a self-realizing prophecy, Captain.”

Flint’s smile slips into a scowl. “I thought we were discussing your problems?”

“Were we?” Truthfully, they’ve been discussing this furtively long before Madi showed up tonight.

To his credit, Flint doesn’t call him out on his hypocrisy, for all his frowning. But Silver doesn’t pretend his past doesn’t exist. He just can’t — _can’t_ — speak of it, for his continued survival. He thinks Flint is beginning to understand that, though.

“Thomas isn’t a schoolboy,” Silver says, for the thousandth time. “He isn’t delicate. Fuck, he’s probably seen as much horror as we have.” It’s an old argument, and if Thomas ever heard him say it, Silver would die of embarrassment. But Silver knows Thomas isn’t unfamiliar with violence. Flint keeping that part of himself locked away to preserve this idea he has of Thomas is a disservice to him and all he’s been through.

Flint looks like he wants to turn away, so Silver inches up in his chair, hooking his foot over Flint’s thigh, pinning him down. He could still get up if he wanted to, but in doing so it would clearly be him running away.

He scowls, and then sighs. His hand slides up to hold onto Silver’s ankle. For a man so sure this will all slip away from him, he loves to touch them both, all the time. Needlessly, pointlessly, just for the sake of holding. But, perhaps that’s why.

“A long time ago,” Flint says, “I got into a fight.”

“ _You?_ ”

“Shut it,” he says, tugging a little at Silver’s leg hair. “I was — still in the Navy. A man well above my station — but then, most officers were — had insulted Thomas to me. And…. he insulted Miranda, too. And myself, I suppose. He said something utterly vile. But I’d spent years, Silver, _years_ maintaining this self-control, wanting to be seen as intelligent but reserved and level-headed. I wanted to be _steady_ , because I always felt in my soul to be _un_ steady. I was always teetering, always off-balance. But I’d done it, I was steady, and in fact, it was that very impression that led me to Thomas in the first place. We met under a falsehood. I wonder if he even realizes.

“But this man insulted them, and I…. lost my balance, you could say. In my head. It was all I could do not to kill everyone in that pub. It hadn’t been my first fight, but my first in awhile. As it is, I only beat two of them bloody. I’d heard later, the one man couldn’t breathe properly afterwards. Sometime I did to his nose, I guess. He wheezed all the time when he breathed. He was very popular, before, but apparently, he snored so loudly afterwards, his shipmates grew to hate him. No one took him seriously, and no one wanted to work with him. Became completely ostracized, his career in the Navy ultimately stagnating. I never gave him another thought, once the fight was over and he’d left the bar, holding his face together. I was too concerned with myself, and Thomas and Miranda.”

Silver rubs Flint’s collar, slipping his hand under his shirt. “Sounds like he deserved it.”

Flint’s smile is sad. “They only heard about the incident a month or so later. Another officer mentioned it offhand in some meeting.” Flint laughs unhappily. “He actually _defended_ me when he’d heard. Said I’d never do such a thing. When I confirmed it, he was _livid_. It wasn’t embarrassment at being wrong in front of others, or horror at my actions and their consequences. He hated violence done in his name. Said the whole point of his endeavor was to prevent leading a war and having men die at his request, for his goals. He — I’d never seen him so mad. I still haven’t. It nearly crushed me, at the time. The shame of it. The only time I’ve ever felt ashamed for hitting a man. What would he do, knowing everything I’ve done in his name, to _honor_ his memory? Things I did, knowing full-well he wasn’t around to be disappointed, so there was nothing to stop me from feeling enjoyme—” He stops.

Silver draws him close by the jaw. They’re still sitting sideways, so he can really only kiss his temple and rest his head on his neck. They stay like that for awhile. Finally, Silver says, “See? You just told me something you’re ashamed of, and the world didn’t end. I understand, because I love you.”

He can feel Flint’s smile on his skin. “You’re different.”

“How so?”

“The first time you ever saw me, I was bashing a man’s head in. As far as first impressions go, I could only go up from there.”

“Ehh, I think you might have dipped a little lower at a few points before finally rising.” He gasps then, as Flint bites into his neck in warning. A part of him wants to keep him there, knowing where it’ll eventually lead, but he also knows this isn’t the end to this conversation. Regretfully, he nudges Flint away, just a little. Just so he can look into his eyes. Flint looks a little less miserable now, so Silver says, “He’s not an idiot, Captain. He died, to you anyway, so you became a pirate, so you did violent things. He doesn’t have to step far to draw the obvious conclusion.”

“I know.” They’re still close enough that Flint’s breath hits his chin, and it’s the warmest thing in the room. “But if I don’t tell him, he doesn’t have to know for sure.”

Flint had sounded so uncertain just then, Silver doesn’t have it in him to keep pressing. “We can go back to talking about my relationship agony for awhile, if you like.”

He chuckles. “Madi? I figured out your solution while I was getting myself worked up just now.”

“Oh, really?”

“She sees a future, and she isn’t stupid either. She knows you don’t, since the moment she dropped you off on my doorstep. You would have sat on that cliff forever, had she not intervened. So figure out how to show her you see a future with her. Better yet, show her how you can fit into hers.”

Silver thinks about it. “That’s it? You make it sound so easy.”

“Of course it’s not. But it’s a piece.” Flint hands Silver a thin, pointed bit of brass, no longer than his thumb. An hour hand. “You can’t fix a problem without knowing all the pieces.”

Silver doesn’t even know half of them, to be perfectly honest. “Never would I have believed my relationship with _you_ would be my most stable.”

“Of course we are,” Flint says. “You’ve always been the only sure thing in my life.” He’s right. Apart from a dew deceits Flint had always seen through, from Flint’s perspective, he’s always known exactly how to feel about Silver, and every time he’d been right. It used to terrify him, to be so known. “We figured things out because we learned how to talk to each other. You and Thomas are figuring things out because you're learning how to talk….less to each other, and figured out… other things you can do together.”

“Stop, before your ears get any pinker.”

“Anyway,” Flint says, glaring. “You just need to discover what combination works best for you and Madi.”

He loves talking to Madi, is the thing. Their first conversation had been arguing for his own survival, and every conversation thereafter had felt like more of the same, in the best possible way. Silver had never loved anyone in his life until he’d grown up, and grown old. Sometimes he suspects he’s doing it wrong — doing it too _much_ — but he can’t figure out any other way.

“For what it’s worth,” Flint says, playing with the fraying, ugly end of Silver’s sleeve and avoiding his eyes, “whatever it is you decide, whatever it is you and Madi decide, there’s always a place for you here with me. With us. You’ll always fit into my future, whatever that may be.”

Silver never likes to think about those last miserable days in Nassau. Every day he’d been angry and confused and hurt, and that night in Flint’s cabin, when Flint had murmured into the gloom of the night, “ _I think you’re the best of us,_ ” had been the encapsulation of all those tormenting feelings. Flint never thought of his own future, but he’d been contemplating Silver’s for a long time, now.

He’s never had much self-appreciation in his life. The only times he’s ever really liked himself was at Flint’s side. The only way he’s ever been good enough for Madi was at Flint’s side. He can stand upright at Flint’s side. He never has to hide with Flint.

It used to be, hiding was what he did best. In the middle of a frosted night, sitting at a table cluttered with spare cogs and parts unable to move forward unless put together again, Silver is surprised to realize he never wants to hide again.

“Oh, darling.” He takes Flint’s face in both hands. “Of course there’s always a place for me here. I own the building.”

Flint kisses him. “Why do I even bother with you?” he mutters against his lips.

“Because I own the building,” Silver says again, pulling back barely an inch. Flint’s eyes are half-lidded and dark but oh, so light. “You’d be out on your arse otherwise.”

It’s late, and they have separate beds to get to. Separate spouses to keep warm through the night. And maybe that’s why Silver clings a little to Flint, because he suddenly recalls Madi saying she’s _intrigued_ by them together, and he hopes she gets enough rest for tomorrow. He kisses Flint and thinks about what tomorrow night will bring.

There he goes, already contemplating the future.

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

The next morning proves cold but sunny, and all of yesterday’s snow has begun to melt by the time dawn has given away to day, turning all the dirt roads into muck. It’s blustery, too, the wind blowing hard enough to rattle the shutters on the upstairs window. Silver doesn’t like to throw the word _cherish_ around, but that’s exactly how he feels about working below his own home.

Leaving Madi under a pile of blankets is one of the hardest things he’s ever done. He barely slept last night, and in fact awoke at least an hour before the sun. But he’d been wrapped around her, breathing in the scent of her neck, and he’d been overcome with the arresting energy to _move_ , to act, to show her his life and her place in it.

Silver knows this is a common side effect of conversing with Flint on any given subject, but he’s helpless to do anything about it. God above, he woke up this morning and had actually wanted to _work._

He’s back by his piano trying to go over yesterday’s numbers again. The Inn looks different this time of day, still and pale, air gray with quiet, like the silence of a storm cloud. The hour’s so early the dust doesn’t even bother to rise when he walked in. Pubs aren’t meant to exist at this hour.

With his ledger splayed out on the keys, he’s trying to find the money to pay everyone who needs paying while simultaneously having products to sell and also earning something in return. But his frustrations from last night have disappeared. Above him, three beautiful people are sleeping, are warm, will look at him with a smile when they finally open their eyes. These are just numbers on a page.

As he goes through everything for the third time, his idly plucks the piano keys. He keeps thinking of a dream he had last night. It’s a dream he used to have, in the days after leaving Flint in Savannah. In it, it was always sunset, and Madi was in the ocean surrounding her island. She submerged, and then rose, her hair flying above her, her eyes closed against the salt. Silver sat on the shore, watching. Beside him, a hand touched his, digging in the sand together. And somewhere, behind them, an old song began to play, but he can never remember the words or the tune when he wakes up.

He starts playing nothing in particular on the piano, not all that used to playing with just his left hand. It might be a melody. It might just be noise. It sounds cheerful to him either way.

“That’s a pleasant tune, Jonathan,” says a deep voice behind him. “Not your usual miserable shit.”

Silver turns with a smile. “Good morning, Benjamin.” He rises from the piano to greet him. Even with just one other person, the Inn feels more alive.

The returning smile and handshake are miles warmer than the wind coming in through the back door. “ _Good_ morning? Never before knew you to have a _good_ morning for me. What’s got you so light?”

Silver grins, despite himself. “Come in and have some tea before you get started,” he says.

Benjamin shuts the door behind him as he joins Silver by the bar. He’s so tall he almost has to stoop for the Inn’s low ceilings. Silver likes the feeling, being behind the bar with a customer at the counter, even one who isn’t paying. He’s always loved being behind the scenes of things, orchestrating and pulling the strings. Unless someone’s life was on the line, of course. Then he wanted nothing to do with it.

“Only a quick sip, if that’s okay,” Benjamin says, taking the cup from Silver and wrapping his frozen hands around it. “Like an idiot I left my coat at home. I didn’t expect it to be so cold today.”

“Claire will have your head if you bring sickness into the house,” Silver says. “I don’t think we have anything that might fit, but surely a scarf….?”

“It’s no bother,” Benjamin assures him. “I’m headed back after here, and this tea should do the trick.” He gulps his tea down, uncaring of the temperature. “So tell me what’s got you all a-flutter?”

Silver scowls. “I’m not _fluttering_. I always say good morning to you.”

“You say _morning_. Or _hullo, Benjamin._ Sometimes you just wave, if it’s been a particularly late night. Go on then. Don’t let me return home to Claire with naught but a cold. You know she loves idle gossip.”

Benjamin and Claire were one of Mr. Levine’s concessions, before he left. He’d insisted they were the cheapest brewery in town, and unless Silver planned on making his own, he shouldn’t go anywhere else. Silver hadn’t really had any notion of changing any of Mr. Levine’s business practices, but when he’d finally gotten a good look at the couple, he had no plans of going anywhere else. He also stopped cutting their swill, like Mr. Levine did to save on cost, which meant he had to pay them more often. Which is probably why he’s so deep in the hole — he figures more people would be in to drink when they found out he no longer served shite ale, but the word hasn’t spread completely.

Normally he’s bothered by all of this — Mr. Levine ruining perfectly good beer, a reputation for once he’s failing to salvage, exchanging _money_ for services — but this morning. It’s a good one.

But he just busies himself pointlessly wiping down the countertop, ignoring Benjamin, whose eyeing him over his teacup.

“You’re no fun, Jonathan,” he says after draining the last drop. “I mean, I’ve always known this, but it’s good to be proven right once in awhile. Let me go get your barrels.”

Silver follows him out the back. Not that he can in away help beyond holding the door open for him, but he feels less guilty about just standing around and watching him work alone.

“Fine,” Silver says suddenly, because why _shouldn’t_ he say anything? “If you must know, my wife came to visit last night.” Just the words warm him against the cold of the back alley.

Benjamin pauses where he’s unloading Silver’s barrels of ale. “You have a _wife_?”

“What?” Silver feels a little offended. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“No,” says Benjamin. “I just didn’t think you were the marrying kind.”

Silver blinks at that. At first he thinks it’s a dig about his leg, which other men would make without a second thought, but he doesn’t think Benjamin would be so cruel to think that about anyone, let alone an acquaintance like Silver. Then he fears he and Flint and Thomas might not be as discreet as they try to be, that if Benjamin noticed anything, easily anyone else could.

But then Benjamin stops as he’s walking through the door, arms wrapped hard around the barrel, and says, “After all, you’re such a curmudgeon, Johnny.”

“Ugh.” Silver grimaces. “Don’t call me that.”

Benjamin laughs, setting down the barrel by the bar. He’ll brings them all in first so they can close the door quick. “She came in last night, you said? From England?”

It’s such a startling idea that Silver lets out a little laugh. “England? Lord, no. She’s from…. south of here. From the island colonies.”

Benjamin pauses again, accessing him, trying to interpret what that means. “I see.” He goes back out again for another barrel. “How’s she liking this weather, then?”

“Hates it,” Silver says with a grin.

“Bet you like finding ways to warm her up, though.”

“Benjamin!” But _God_ , it feels so fucking good. Usually, the only person he can talk about Madi to is Flint, and there’s too much baggage there. There’s too much seriousness, too much to worry about. He’s never been able to discuss her like this, as just his wife. All Benjamin knows about her is that Silver loves her, and it’s exhilarating. He wants to tell him everything about her and never once mention wars, or pirates, or cages, or hunger. Without mentioning betrayal and empty cliffs and a hand over feverish hand and a single deaf ear. He can tell Benjamin about how Madi stood out to him in a crowd like a beacon that first day, how her hips swayed like she’d been walking through a meadow of wheat. He wants to tell him how she was the first person for whom he could stand naked on one leg, and how she’d placed a kiss above his knee he can still feel to this day. He wants to tell him about the face she makes when he pretends he hasn’t read the books she loves, just so she’ll scowl and roll her eyes and tell him the whole plot anyway, and she still hasn’t cottoned on even when she’s described the same stories a handful of times over. He wants to tell him about how she knew how amusing he’d find a sword hidden inside a cane would be.

One of the most important lessons he’s ever learned in his godforsaken life was when to shut up. But he never wants to stop talking about Madi.

“I’m only joking,” Benjamin says, carrying the last barrel in. “Joy is a good look on you.”

Silver frowns. “I never looked happy before?”

“You did,” Benjamin assures. “Especially around your friends. But I can see a weight missing from you. It’s not easy, being separated from the ones you love.”

Truthfully, before Madi, and before that Flint, it’s not an issue Silver’s ever had. He doesn’t doubt it’s something Benjamin is familiar with, though.

Benjamin glances around the Inn. “Where are yesterday’s barrels?”

“Christ, I forgot.” Silver ushers Benjamin behind the bar, saying, “We had to put them in the cellar last night to prevent an accidental death. Some Irishmen came through and one thing led to another led to Thomas insisting he knew how to jig. He nearly broke his neck.”

Silver manages to squat and pull the metal loop to open the cellar doors before Benjamin could do it. Using his crutch to leverage himself up, he says, “We intended to bring them back up, but then… Madi showed up, and we got… distracted.”

“I bet you did,” Benjamin laughs.

“Do you need one of my lodgers to come help you?”

“I can manage.”

Silver leaves him to it, heading back to the piano. Just as he goes to sit, he hears a creak from behind.

Madi stands at the foot of the stairs, warily surveying the empty Inn. But when she catches Silver’s gaze, she visibly eases. She’s wearing her dress from yesterday, but her hair is unwrapped, and she’s got their blanket clutched around her.

“Good morning,” he says, and now he’s too focused on that word _good_ , but fuck it, it _is._ “Tea?”

Madi nods, and then is briefly distracted by something over Silver’s shoulder, her face freezing. He turns back around as Benjamin stomps up the stairs, carrying two empty barrels over each shoulder. With extreme dexterity Silver can’t help but envy, even on a morning as good as this, he manages to get a foot between the crack of the heavy back door and push it open wide enough to move through.

It starts to swing shut behind him, before a bitter burst of wind knocks it backwards, slamming it into the wall with a shuddering bang. Silver flinches at the noise and the cold bite coming in, rising to make sure Benjamin is alright.

Benjamin appears just as fast. “Sorry,” he says quickly, grabbing the door and closing it tight behind him. “I —” Now he’s the one staring at something behind Silver, but when he turns to look, the stairs are empty.

“Was that…” Benjamin looks unsure. “... your wife?”

“I think so,” Silver says, frowning at the spot Madi had stood. “She’s really unused to the cold weather, I think. This wind…”

Benjamin looks considering, eyeing Silver hard. Eventually, he says, “Make sure she’s careful out there. It’s always dangerous. Never know where the wrong types might be.” But then he adds, smiling a little, “You should bring your wife round for dinner some night. I’m sure Claire and George would love to meet her.”

Silver tries not to look too relieved at the invitation. He’d been hoping for one, wanting to give Madi an opportunity to meet Benjamin and Claire and see how _they_ could work, could live in a society like this. “That would be lovely, thank you so much.”

Then he remembers Madi being _intrigued_ , and adds, “Perhaps the night after next?”

Benjamin promises to arrange with Claire and get back to him, then goes downstairs to retrieve the last empty barrel. Silver walks with him to his cart, hunching over his crutch against the wind, and won’t move from in front of Benjamin’s horse until he takes an offered scarf to borrow.

“I’ll return it at dinner,” Benjamin says with a sigh, wrapping it around his bare neck.

From inside the Inn, Silver can hear another door slam, but the back door is still propped open. And when he goes back inside, the Inn is empty again. The dust is finally awake, however, dancing listlessly in shallow clouds by the front door. Silver watches it fall to the floor, confused. Perhaps Thomas had a meeting with Doctor Reynolds he’s, once again, forgotten about until the last minute.

He sits down again, and plays the same tune as before. He thinks he remembers it, an old song, in an old voice, filling an old room.

“ _If I go ten thousand miles,_ ” he sings under his breath, trying to remember the words, when hears the stairs creak once more.

Flint enters with his hair all over the place, scowling at the cold in the Inn like his ire might make it leave. He pulls his coat closer, coming near.

“Why haven’t you lit a damn fire yet?” he complains, but he makes sure to smooth away his anger before kissing Silver. “Good morning. Do you know where my scarf is?”

“At this very second? No.” Silver gets up just so he can lean on him. “But I have it feeling it might turn up tomorrow night.”

“Oh, you have that feeling, do you?”

“I’m very in touch with my feelings.”

“That may be the biggest lie you’ve ever told.” When Flint kisses him again, Silver makes sure to warm up his lips, too.

“Where did Thomas go in such a rush?” Silver asks eventually.

“Nowhere,” says a voice behind them. Thomas is much more comfortable in the chill, without even needing to button up his waistcoat. Despite everything, he’s still intensely British. “Must have just been a pleasant dream you were having.”

Silver frowns, stepping away from Flint. “I thought I heard the front door slam a moment ago.”

“Twasn’t me.” Thomas taps a piano key a couple times. “Where’s Madi?”

Silver feels the cold air begin to creep inside him. “She went upstairs,” he says.

“And then she went downstairs.”

“No, she was here for a moment,” Silver says, resisting the urge to grab him. “And then she went back up.”

“Yes, and then she came back down. She….had a cloak on.” Thomas looks around the Inn, realization dawning. “I — I just thought she was cold!”

Silver lurches towards the door, the howling winds outside mirrored inside him. He feels his bones might snap like frozen twigs, he feels like they have already broken and his ribs are just shards of ice stabbing with each frantic breath. He throws open the door, ignoring Flint’s calls, and goes out into the cold. Few people are out on the streets, hunched over against the wind as they make their way. Silver is blinded by his own hair whipping around his face.

“Can you see her?” he asks Flint. “Can you — do you _see_ —”

“No. Come on.” Flint grabs him by his elbow and pulls him inside before he can start screaming her name in the streets. He doesn’t even feel warmer now that he’s inside. He doesn’t feel anything.

“She’s definitely not up there,” Thomas pants, running back down the stairs.

“She just left.” The words are dead in Silver’s mouth. He leans hard on his piano, resting his forehead on the back. For the first time ever, he wishes he still had his iron leg. He wants nothing more than to stomp this whole fucking place into the ground. “She just. She left. She just fucking _left_.”

Flint sounds cautious, and closer, when he just gently asks, “What happened?”

“Nothing!” Silver backs away from him, from them both. If they touch him, he’s not sure what he might do. He starts pacing, each step painful and necessary. “She came down, she smiled at me, then she fucking _left_. She's gone, again, _again_ , she —”

“Silver. _Silver.”_ Thomas holds his hands out like he’s trying to calm a raging horse. “Calm down. We don’t know what happened, we don’t know —”

“Was Benjamin here?” Flint asks suddenly.

Silver stops. Flint is staring at the barrels of ale by the floor, his brow furrowed. “What? Yes, what does that —”

“Did Madi see him?”

Stopping had been a mistake. He’s trembling like he’s cold, but he still can’t feel a damn thing. “Yes? What? Yes, he’d been bringing the empty barrels out from the cellar to his cart. They didn’t speak or anything. Why?”

“So Madi came down here,” Flint says slowly, “saw Benjamin working, with no sign around his neck that says, ‘Freed Slave’ or any other indication that he was not, in fact, being forced to work without pay?”

Oh.

Now Silver feels something. Pure, limitless rage. “You don’t think — that _she_ would think — there’s no _way_ she would ever think I _owned a slave!_  Come on, she —”

“Or perhaps that you worked with someone who did,” Thomas says gently, coming up to stand beside Flint. “She’s clearly been through something since we saw her last, something painful and difficult. We all know that reason is often the last thing that returns to us, once these events have passed.”

Silver replays the last few minutes of the morning. He wonders if he’s ever before in his life gone from joy to abject misery so quickly. For a brief, shining moment, he’d known exactly who he was. He’d been exactly who Madi saw, who Flint saw, who Thomas saw. He’d been a man making dinner plans, a man playing a tune from his dreams, a man beautiful women smiled at, a man beautiful men kiss. He’d been sure-footed, opened, visible. Now he’s not sure any of them can even see a man when they look at him. Maybe all they see is a shell fragment, useless, washed up, missing something vital. Whose only purpose is to get smaller, to be ground up by time into nothing but sand.

Madi thinks him to be like her biggest enemy, like the monsters from her childhood. Her nightmare, she mistook him for in the blink of an eye, and didn’t feel it necessary to say a word to him.

Silver straightens. “I’m going to go find her,” he says, suddenly calm. “And then I’m going to kill her and myself afterwards.”

There’s a heavy pause as he struggles into his coat.

“Um,” says Thomas, “not really, right?”

“No. I’m going to find her and have a truthful conversation with her about everything.” But to Silver, that’s a lot like death anyway.

He stops at the door. “Do you both need to leave right now?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Flint hesitates before saying, “I can hang around a little longer. Or perhaps, I can ask Christopher —”

“Yes, I’m sure Doctor Reynolds won’t —”

Silver shakes his head, looking away from them. “Just, can one of you stay to let the cook know when he comes by that we won’t be opening today? Assure him he’ll still get paid. And possibly, can you leave a note on the door as well for patrons?”

Suddenly, Flint’s hand is over his. It’s so warm, unlike anything else he’s feeling, it makes Silver jump and look at him. Thomas stands behind him,  anxiously rubbing his injured hand. Flint doesn’t ask if he’s sure. He knows better than to ask Silver if he wants help. It’s enough knowing they’d both risk their jobs for him, even though none of them can afford it. All he says is, “If you need us, you know where to find us.”

Silver manages a nod. He’s remembering Benjamin’s warning. He’s remembering the _wrong type_.

It’s a bright, clear day, but still Flint says as he goes, “Be careful.”

There’s no snow on the ground, and horses and people have made the road a chaotic muck already. There’s nothing to track, so he just picks the direction the wind’s blowing in and sets off.

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

Flint stares so long at the board on his work desk that he starts to see his own face reflected in the grain.

He blinks away the sawdust in his eyes, trying to focus. He has no intention of losing a finger today. Not that the company he keeps would be disparaging of such a loss, but he still has plenty need for all his digits.

He sits back on his stool, jack plane dangling at his side. He’d been looking at the lumber to avoid looking out the big window of the back of the workshop, as though waiting to see if Madi would stroll by.

He looks out the window. She isn’t there.

Flint cracks his neck, his back, his wrist. The sky has clouded over since morning, the light too dim in the back of Christopher’s shop to do any of the precision work he prefers, despite it actually not being in his job description. But it’s not like there’s anyone else around to do it.

He should have known taking this job would be a mistake. It’s a pretty obvious sign outright, a carpenter working alone, without laborer or apprentice. No ship or building commission in sight, only the odd piece of decorative furniture that wouldn’t kill anyone if it collapsed.

But he and Thomas had just arrived in Boston, poor and desperate and hungry, having spent all the money they’d managed to take before leaving the plantation just to get there and pay a single month’s rent. He’d never told Thomas, but he’d first stumbled into Christopher’s shop intending to rob him. But then Christopher had awoke from his opiate stupor, taken a good look at Flint, and offered him two day’s pay if he could plane the raw wood he had piling up in the back.

He hadn’t worked in a carpenter’s shop since he was a boy, and never that kind of hard labor. Picking up the saw that first time, he’d felt the faint ghost of his father lay down across his shoulders. Like a cold shadow of a cloud passing over the sun — something he could recognize, perhaps, but not something he could touch. Not something he could change. Just a feeling he had to wait to pass.

He should eat. He should make sure Christopher is awake, in case someone actually came in wanting to buy something. He should let Christopher sleep and sneak out to look for Madi.

With a sigh, he stands back up. The board on his desk is starting to resemble less the oak from whence it came. He sits the plane back down on the board, and with quick, even strokes, begins shaving away at the wood. It’s meant to be a table, and the board lays longer than he is tall. Moving against the grain, he works up and down, thin strips of wood curling over his hands and arms. It’s mindless work, but he appreciates it now.

He can’t just walk out of here, no matter how much he longs to. He remembers, distantly, the glow he’d felt when he’d first become a Captain in Nassau. Despite everything, and all his misgivings about the life he’d chosen, there had been one bright spot — he’d never have to work for someone again. He’d been — _discussing_ with Silver, the best way to go about taking over the shop. Christopher isn’t nearly as ready to be forced into retirement as Mr. Levine was, and so he and Silver have been talking around their only solution for awhile now.

But he can’t just leave to go help Silver now, because Christopher might fire him, and then he’ll have to go right to Plan B (which at this point, is more like Plan A and a half) of killing him and getting rid of the body before anyone noticed, and he isn’t _nearly_ as prepared for that yet.

If Silver shows up, asking for help, he’ll go. Until that moment, though, he planes the wood, and thinks.

He’s spent all morning thinking about Madi, worrying about her, worrying about Silver. It’s not safe for her out there, alone. He doesn’t think Silver will have trouble finding her — he’s awfully good at uncovering missing things, it seems — but reasoning with her, that’s something else entirely.

Faintly, he hears voices over his sawing coming from the front room, but he recognizes Christopher’s gruff response among them, so he doesn’t pause with his work, shaking the wood and dust from his hands.

After Silver had left this morning, Thomas had been quick to follow, needing to meet with Doctor Reynolds. Before leaving, they’d circled the block for any sign of Madi, just in case. Without any luck, they’d returned to the Inn for a private goodbye.

Thomas’s kiss had been his usual kiss — loving, tender, just the faintest hint of filth — but Flint had seen a funny look in his eye when he’d pull away, and the last thing Thomas said before leaving had been, “It must be difficult, not being able to properly communicate with a loved one. I should wonder.”

Oh no, Flint hadn’t been thinking about that this morning at _all._ Only during the seconds between each inhale and exhale. Worrying about Silver and Madi had almost felt a reprieve.

It keeps bouncing around his skull, alongside Silver’s hushed voice from last night saying calmly, easily, like it was no momentous thing, “I understand, because I love you.”

He understands. Because he loves him. Said so as to point out what Silver saw as obvious, that understanding _comes_ from love. Perhaps for Silver, it does. He’s bothered to understand so few people in his lifetime, and he’s loved even less, it must feel somehow intertwined to him. But it’s never felt that clear to Flint. He’s always felt understood _despite_ any love one might have for him. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Thomas can love him — and does — without understanding who Flint really is. That’s exactly what Thomas is doing now, in fact, albeit against his will. The moment Flint gives him the opportunity to understand him, is also the moment he gives Thomas the chance to _not_. He gives Thomas a chance to rethink everything there is to know about him.

He wants to spend every waking moment with Thomas, but the last thing he wants is for Thomas to _see_ him.

Flint abruptly stops planing the wood, taking a deep breath. It’s a little trite, but he can’t help but see himself again in the oak board below him: he’s been shaved away so many times in his life, he’s almost unrecognizable with each passing day.

He just hopes he’s carved into something of _use_.

Placing the jack plane on his stool, he uses a rag to wipe down the board of dust and shavings. Then he grabs his two winding sticks and places them on opposite ends of the board. He crouches at one end of the work table, putting his weight down on one knee to keep steady. He’s looking to make sure he’s planed it well enough so it’s level, and that there are no twists in the wood. Keeping one eye on the further winding stick, he tilts his head up and down slowly, and that’s where he is when he hears a faint, delicate voice say, “Mr. Flint?”

He doesn’t go by that name anymore.

Flint looks up.

Abigail Ashe’s dress is the same color cream as the wall behind her, both shaded by the clouded afternoon light from outside. It’s the same color as Abigail’s complexion, except for the pink in her cheeks and the roses in the stitching. Abigail is wearing her hair the same, long but pinned away from her face, trailing down the soft brown fur shawl over her shoulders. But Abigail no longer looks like the child he’d seen last time. Abigail looks grown — not old, but _grown_ , her hands lax over the slight swell of her pregnant belly. The shock in Abigail’s gaze is familiar, at least, likely because Flint has never seen Abigail looking calm or safe in his presence, and Abigail must not feel either, now, alone in a room with a ghost. The feeling, at least, is mutual. Abigail. _Abigail._

Flint stands.

Abigail shifts as he rises, but she doesn’t back away. The hands resting on her belly tighten slightly, unconsciously. The stunned look on her face remains. “It _is_ you,” she breathes. “How— ”

“Abby?” A deep voice echoes from the front room. “Where have you gotten to?”

A man comes through the door behind Abigail, breaking her gaze on Flint. He has the same vestiges of youth clinging to his face that Abigail has, with warm brown eyes and the sharpest jawline Flint’s ever seen. He stands at least two heads taller than Abigail, and distantly Flint thinks she must like that sort of thing.

The fondness on the man’s face drops the moment he stops looking at Abigail and notices Flint in the room. “Is everything alright?” He’s got something of a Scottish brogue he’s poorly masking, and his voice has a sudden protective danger to it.

Flint still hasn’t said anything, though he knows he should before she does. Change is the hardest thing to recognize in oneself, it can happen so gradually. The last time he’d stood in a room with Abigail, he never would have imagined a day might come when he would be absolutely terrified of what she might do next.

“Oh, Theo, yes,” Abigail says, putting a hand through his elbow. She smiles at the man who must be her husband, and then smiles at the man who murdered her father. “I was just admiring the work. It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

Something bangs in the front room, and then Flint hears the telltale drag-stomp of Christopher’s feet as he lumbers into the room behind Abigail and Theo.

“People aren’t supposed to be back here,” he says gruffly, glaring at Flint.

“Yes, the — the gentleman was just telling me this,” says Abigail. The shock on her face is gone, replaced with the same kindness he’d once seen directed only at Miranda. There isn’t a trace of fear. It makes Flint feel split open, like a tree root. “I’m sorry to intrude, sirs. You do such beautiful work. What is this meant to be?” She gestures nervously to the work desk, where the large plank sits as rough and plain as Flint himself.

He doesn’t say anything.

“It…. looks like a table, dear,” Theo says slowly, giving Abigail a confused smile. “Or a very short wall. Come on, we’d best be getting out the way.” He turns, suddenly face to face with Christopher. Neither men look pleased with their sudden proximity, but Christopher knows better to spit about it. He just gestures with his cane and leads them out. Abigail doesn’t look back.

Flint is alone. Dust floats in the air where people once were. Idly, he thinks he might be sick.

Then he hears Abigail say, “Oh, I think I’ve dropped my handkerchief. Just a moment.”

Of course, she actually _did_ drop her handkerchief. The sight of it, yellow and soft in the spot where she’d just stood, spurs Flint into sudden action. She shouldn’t have to bend down for it.

He’s across the room and picking it up as Abigail returns.

She takes it quickly from his hand and whispers, “The Blue Standard Hotel, off Main Street. Do you know it? Can you meet me in the alley beside at half past five?”

He doesn’t say anything. He’s much closer to her now, and he can see all the edges of her that make it her completely, horribly real. Can see how clearly pale her skin still is, the petal blue veins beneath eyes still as serious as he remembers. He sees the shadow of her father in her nose, her brow.

He’s speechless until she hisses, “ _Please?_ ”

Finally, Flint nods. “Yes.” It’s near where he and Thomas meet to walk home together, and around the same time. He’ll just have to be quick, and pray. “Yes.”

She smiles, relieved, and touches the back of his hand quickly before leaving in a haste.

Flint stands by the door until he can’t anymore, and then he slouches against the wall, trying to get his heart to sit back in his chest. He hears the faint sound of people making their goodbyes, and he closes his eyes. He wonders how many times must he meet ghosts in his life before he himself becomes one. How much more can a living body withstand the remains of past lives? How much longer can his dreams infiltrate his reality before he finally loses what little reason he has?

The drag-stomp of Christopher approaching makes him open his eyes. The grizzled, red-faced man grinning at him with blackened teeth makes the panic flee his body like a doused candle.

“ _Finally_ ,” Christopher says, leaning hard on his cane. There’s a knowledge to his mean smile that doesn’t quite connect with the glossy look in his eyes. “Was beginning to think you were a eunuch. Never seen you so stunned by a lass before. Mind you, she’s a pretty thing, bit soft, but I bet that pale skin on her can turn pink right quic—”

Flint stands, and keeps standing until he’s towering over Christopher.

His mouth snaps shut as he looks up at Flint with wide eyes. Christopher has always been too mean, too stupid, too inebriated to sense the _other_ of Flint. Suddenly, Christopher looks very sober.

And the sunlight in the room has taken on a queer, red tinge to the edges. “Continue with that line of thought, sir,” Flint says quietly, “and I’ll see how evenly I can plane the flat of your tongue. I’ve become quite skilled at it as of late.”

Somehow, Christopher widens his eyes further, and he takes an awkward step back. He opens his mouth, and then, taking in the large number of saws, chisels, hammers, and knives in the workplace, shuts his mouth again.

“Shall I get back to work?” Flint asks, leaning a little closer.

With a shaky nod, Christopher backs out of the room. Flint waits, and hears the clumsy rattle of Christopher opening his liquor cabinet.

Which is interesting. He and Silver had disregarded retirement as an option, and had only thought some kind of accident might befall Christopher instead. Flint had assumed he’d be too useless to properly intimidate, but perhaps not.

He looks at the clock on the far wall. A couple hours to go before he’s supposed to meet Abigail. Silver’s wandering the city, looking for Madi, and somewhere out there, Thomas is hard at work.

It’s so much safer, to hold dead people in his arms. Infinitely worse, yes. But safer.

* * *

 


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

 

There isn’t any part of Silver that isn’t in agony. His side and underarm ache from the crutch, as does his whole leg from hours wandering the city, stomping through muddy roads and hard stone for any sign of Madi. His face is wind-chafed and sore, his eyes stinging from the cold, his jaw pained from clenching his teeth all day. His left leg always hurts.

He’s heading back to the Inn, not exactly conceding defeat, but not really knowing what else to do. Flint would probably call it a tactical retreat. But Madi isn’t anywhere. He went to the docks earlier, but the only ships scheduled to head out today were all bound for Europe, and she might be pissed but not _that_ pissed. Still, he can’t imagine her leaving Boston any other way.

He can always imagine her _leaving_ , sure. He imagines it all the time. Just not like this.

He needs more eyes. He’s loathe to disrupt Flint and Thomas at work, knowing their income, now no longer spent on rent, is being used to support all of them until he could manage to get the Inn to turn a profit. God. _Work_. He hated the idea of _work_ for so long, but then he’d forgotten that in his haste to end a life even more desperate and degrading than _work_.

Piracy hadn't been for him. Neither is any kind of work, though. He just wants to lie on a rock like a lizard and bake in the sun for the rest of his life. Unbothered, unaware, eating whatever fly drifts into view.

Now, they’re all stuck trying to fit into these new roles they don’t belong in, and _it isn’t working_.

And he had somehow been able to find Thomas bloody Hamilton — the most needle in the _most_ haystack — but he can't find his own wife in his own fucking city.

He trudges back to the Inn, knowing he should try to _look_ more relaxed, because he can tell people are eyeing him nervously. He’s making the wrong impression with his potential clientele, but he can’t relax. At least that’s one thing piracy had going for it: there was no such thing as the wrong impression. Or rather, there was no right impression to make.

He turns a corner, barely keeping himself from slipping on a stubborn patch of ice in the shade of a building. He’s within sight of the Inn, and he’s not even thinking he might be lucky and she’s returned home while he was out searching for her — he’s not even thinking _that_ because life is never that easy for him. So of course, that’s when he finds Madi, in the alley four doors down from the Inn.

He hears her scream first.

Silver’s turning into the alley on instinct, before the scream has even stopped, hearing it before it even registers that it’s _hers_.

Madi is against the wall, snarling, two hands on her cane and trying to push back against a dirty white man who’s reaching for her neck. She can’t get a chance to pull out the sword, though, because the man kicks her in her bad leg and she stumbles to the side, to the floor, dropping her cane. She lets out another frustrated furious yell, trying to rise before he can kick her again.

Silver doesn’t think. He doesn’t try to be quiet, just quick. The man doesn’t notice Silver until he’s right behind him, and only then does the fucker catch the faintest sight of Silver’s crutch cracking him in the temple. The man crumples, and doesn’t move again.

The force from delivering the blow on one leg makes Silver fall into the opposite wall. Breathing hard, he repositions the crutch swiftly and turns to help Madi up.

She’s already up. She’s panting hard, still snarling, and she’s got her sword out, pointing it right at Silver. It trembles in her hand, but her gaze is steady.

Silver has seen Madi the princess. He’s seen Madi the diplomat, Madi the woman, Madi the lover. Now, Silver is seeing for the first time Madi the warrior. She looks rattled yet sure, so sure of her next move. Despite everything, she looks breathtaking.

Even so, her next move seems to be _forward_ , into Silver’s neck, so he calmly raises his hands. “Morning, darling. Enjoy your walk?”

“Don’t.” She steps over the unconscious man. “ _Don’t_. I thought I could talk to you, but the very _sight_ of you makes my blood rage. How could you — “

“How could I what?” Silver interrupts, because damn it, everything hurts and he’s mad too. “Purchase decent ale from a _free_ black man for me to sell at my own damn business?”

Madi’s face freezes. Her sword, however, doesn’t lower. “What?”

“Benjamin is no slave,” Silver says slowly. “Not any longer. He runs a distillery with his wife. His _white_ wife Clara.” She still looks confused and angry, so he adds, “We’re invited ‘round their place for dinner tomorrow night, by the way.”

Some of the anger recedes, but not the confusion. “I don’t understand.”

Silver sighs, but risks lowering his hands. “She was an indentured servant at the tobacco plantation he’d been enslaved. They fell in love. The plantation owner freed him before he passed, right around the time her service was up. They married, moved here, started a distillery, had a child, can you please put the sword away?”

If anything, she tightens her grip on it, thrusting it closer to his throat. Eyes narrowing, she says, “A child?”

Silver raises his hands again. “What? Yes? Wh—”

“What do you think of the child?”

“What?”

“The child!” The time of the sword is closer enough Silver can see his reflection in the steel. “Do you like the child?”

“ _What?_ ” Silver asks again, a little desperately. “Alexander?” But Madi looks deadly serious, adjusting her grip, so he quickly says, “He’s alright? Funny, you know. Talks a lot for a five year old. Told me when he grows up he wants to either be the next King of England or a thatcher. I told him people had more use of a man who knew how to fix a roof. Can you _please_ put the sword away?”

Madi makes no movement for a moment, thinking hard over his answer, before all at once, whatever weight she’d been carrying drops from her shoulders. She lets go of the sword and falls back onto the opposite wall. Madi the warrior is gone. There’s just Madi now.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Silver, because _Jesus fucking Christ_. He lowers his hands one more time. “Madi. What the _fuck._ ”

She’s not looking at him now. She’s looking at the unconscious man on the floor.

“He was trying to kidnap me,” she says dully, clutching the wall behind her. “To sell me.”

He doesn’t know if she’s guessing, or if the man had said something of the sort to her before he arrived. All he can say is, “Yes.”

Kidnappers are a vile, loathsome part of Colonial life. One white people might tut about but rarely lift a finger to stop. He’s heard Thomas rage about it before, but it’s always been a theoretical menace in their city. The freed black population in Boston is small, and closely knit. They looked out for each other, and knew to be wary of monsters eager to make an easy dollar. He’s yet to hear of actual instances of it happening in Boston, only in cities further south. Either it’s new, or just no one’s talking about it and he’s had his head stuck up his own arse as usual. Thinking of Benjamin’s warning, the latter is probably true. Whatever the case, Thomas will be _livid_ when he hears.

He hopes the man at their feet wakes up. Silver isn’t nearly ready for him to be dead yet.

Madi covers her eyes and presses down, a shaky breath escaping her.

Silver ventures a step closer. “Madi — “

“My mother is dead.”

Silver stops.

Madi drops her hands down, cupping her cheeks. There are tears in her eyes, trapped in her lashes, not willing to fall. Not ready to. “I haven’t said that out loud yet,” she says.

He swallows the first three things he thinks to say, each one more useless than the last. He says, “What happened?”

“I got hurt,” she says, gesturing vaguely to her ear. “I awoke in a village a few days later, far from the fighting, with an envoy from my home at my side. Eme? You might… Anyway, I’d considered her a — friend, but she hadn’t looked happy to see me. She had…. She had a stack of unopened letters from my mother, letters I had avoided for ages. My mother was no fonder of my endeavor than you are. A stack of unopened letters, each one thinner than the one preceding it, and the most recent one, from our Shaman. I read it first, even though I knew what it would say. She —” Her voice broke. “She’d taken ill. She was so strong, she held out much longer than expected. She called out for me until the end, he said.”  Madi rubs her forehead, closing her eyes. A few tears finally fall. “My people wait for me to return, to lead them. To remain there on that island to protect them. I haven’t read her letters yet. I don’t… I can’t….” She stifles herself with the back of her hand, but Silver can still hear the faint sob.

He steps over the unconscious man to hold her like he had that first time. They hadn’t been anything to each other, then. Just a _maybe._ Just a _soon._ He feels no surer of himself, gathering her up in his arms, but this time he won’t make her take that step alone.

She presses herself into his shoulders, breathing hard. The patterns of her braids feel so smooth against the coarseness of his chin. She takes one more shaky breath before pulling back. She loves to look him in the eye when she speaks, knowing how specifically it destroys him.

“Em — they expected me to return home,” she says miserably. “The revolutionaries on Jamaica expected me to stay and fight, to enlist my men to help. Instead, I came here. For — I don’t know what. I don’t know.”

“You don’t need a reason,” Silver says softly, brushing the spot beneath her ear with his thumb. “You can just be here, whenever you want, even if it’s just for a little while.”

Because Silver sees that now, and he’s been seeing it all day. She can’t stay here. The kidnapper at their feet is enough reason why. She would never feel safe here, no matter how hard he and Flint and Thomas worked to keep her safe. There’s no protecting her from civilization.

“I was so happy last night,” she admits. “For the first time in a very long time. But then I saw you with…. what did you say his name was?”

“Benjamin Miller,” he says. “You’d like him. He makes fun of me all the time.”

Madi smiles, but it’s weak and fragile. “I just — I don’t know why I thought I saw what I saw. I’ve been thinking about it all day. It was like I’d been looking for anything to run from, because I’m so terrified of staying here. Of deciding to stay anywhere. I realized almost immediately how stupid leaving was.”

“Why didn’t you just come back?”

Now Madi scowls, and there’s nothing weak or fragile about it. “I got _lost._ Do you know how many times I’ve been somewhere with this many buildings? They all look the same. Are we even near your Inn?”

“We are.” He kisses her forehead. “You got very close.”

A few people wander by outside the alley, but they don’t look their way. They don’t see two people clutching each other the same way death clutches to life. No one knows they’re there — aching and lost in the cracks of the world. But they have each other, and they can be lost together as long as they like.

Madi leans back in his arms. Her tears have dried on the front of his shirt. She’s shivering slightly, and all at once Silver feels the cold again. He hasn’t felt it since he saw her in trouble.

“Your mother was a wonderful leader,” says Silver, holding her face now. “I know you don’t completely believe it, but you and your people are truly blessed to have so sheltered from this fucking world. She gave you a gift. But you don’t have to lead like she did. She protected you, and them, to the best of her abilities. You can choose to carry on that legacy, or you can choose a new path. You can protect them, while progressing them forward. I can’t speak for your people, but I know there’s no one on this earth I’d trust more to lead me into the future.” He presses his lips to hers, quick and sure. “You’ve been my Queen from the moment I saw you.”

She kisses him again. It’s equally sure.

“You can —” She stops, swallows, and then says, “You can come back now, if you wanted.” She adds, “You all are welcome.”

“I know.” He runs a hand over her hair, trembling just a little. “One day soon.” Because Silver needs Flint, too. And Flint needs Thomas, too. And Thomas has spent ten years being hidden away, forgotten and unseen, and he doesn’t want to hide any longer. Silver doesn’t begrudge him that in the slightest. “If Thomas’s smallpox epidemic finally strikes, we’ll certainly be turning up on your doorstep.” He and Flint had already discussed this scenario, and were looking into safe ways to keep Thomas sedated during such a move, as that would be the only way they’d get him to leave.

Madi doesn’t look surprised that he doesn’t want to leave now, or even hurt. She shoots him a soft, teasing grin. “You’re fonder of Thomas than the last time I was here. I can hear it in your voice.”

Silver scowls. “You’re deaf, you can’t hear anything.”

Madi smiles harder. “Yes, I can. You _like_ him now.”

“Ugh. Stop.”

“What changed? I know how you feel about Lords.”

“Yes. I hate them.”

“But you don’t hate Thomas.” She pulls him in closer by the waist. “You’re lighter around him now than before. I could see it even from the brief time last night. What changed?”

She sounds genuinely curious, and he doesn’t blame her. There’s no vitriol between him and her like there was between him and Thomas, but they’ve rarely ever been _light_ with each other. There are alway too many difficult things to get in the way of their relationship being easy.

“Time,” Silver says. “And. Well. We kind of killed someone together.” The man on the floor stirs a little, bumping into the crutch. Silver brightens with a sudden burst of inspiration. “Hey! You want to —”

“No.”

“Yeah,” he says, deflating a little. “You’re right. That might feel a little forced.”

They step away from the kidnapper, who seems to be waking now, disoriented, clutching at the mud. Silver starts to lead her back to the front of the alley, but she doesn’t move.

She’s looking at the kidnapper hard, considering, then says to Silver, “How would you feel about a little maiming?”

Silver considers this. “Funnily enough,” he says, letting her go, “despite everything, I’m feeling particularly fond of maiming right now.”

She picks up her sword.

Together they haul the kidnapper upright before he gets a chance to fully awaken. Silver uses his whole body to keep him up against the wall, placing his hands on the man’s face so he can’t turn and see them. His nose and chin press hard into the building. Now, he’s awake.

“What the _fuck_ —”

“ _Shhh_ ,” Silver shushes him softly, pressing his face harder into the wall until he hears the man’s teeth grit against the brick. Madi’s got her eye on the street, but no one’s walking by now.

The man is still muttering curses against the wall, squirming a little, but he’s probably still out of it from the blow to understand what’s happening. He’s likely just expecting to be robbed.

Madi says, “You were going to sell me.”

Silver can feel the man stiffen even further. “You fucking cunt —”

“You didn’t care who I was,” Madi continues. She’s changing her voice slightly. Alarmingly, Silver thinks she might be impersonating _Max_ , and she’s doing it rather well. “You just saw my skin, and decided you had every right to take me, and sell me.”

The man says nothing, but he’s now trying to push back against Silver, against the wall, but Silver is slightly taller, with more muscle and less gut, and he’s as steady as his love.

“Do you even remember, now, what I look like?” Madi asks quietly. “Other than black?”

The man stops struggling hard, breathing hard through his nose. Silver eases up a little so he can answer.

“You fucking people all look the same to me,” the kidnapper says.

One of Madi’s hands comes up and lies flat between Silver’s shoulder blades. It’s a soft, comforting touch — a thanks, a request, a reminder. He wants to lean back into her, and he wants to kill the man in front of him. He wants to follow her wherever she leads him. Instead, he pulls his hands back slightly, still holding the man’s head forward, but keeping his fingers out of the way.

“I was hoping you’d say something like that,” Madi says.

The second to last thing the kidnapper ever sees is a brick wall. The last thing he sees is the shine of Madi’s sword.

She slices swiftly, but even so the kidnapper starts screaming before she even finished dragging the blade across his eyes. Silver grabs him by the top of his head and his ear, tilting his head just a little. He gets one brief glimpse of the kidnapper’s disfigured, bloody face before slamming his jaw against the wall. He hears it break cleanly, and then the man stop screaming. He’s just gurgling, dragging his fingernails into the brick.

But he’s still conscious, so Silver slams him into the wall again, this time aiming for his forehead. The man crumples once more, and Silver has to drop him before he falls over himself.

He watches to make sure the man doesn’t rise again, and he doesn’t.

There’s blood on one of his hands, and he wipes it on the brick, wrinkling his nose. There’s already plenty of blood on the wall anyway. Madi touches his arm, and then she pulls him closer. He only get a second to see which Madi he’s got in his arms — and it’s Madi the warrior again, but this time the warrior is victorious and wild — before she kisses him deep and dark, in a way that nearly makes him crumple, too.

When she leans away, they’re both out of breath and dazed. Silver sees the sword still in her grip is dripping with blood.

“You said we are close to home?” Madi asks.

Silver takes the sword from her and wipes it clean on the kidnapper’s jacket, while she looks out to see if anyone is on the street. He hands it back so she can slip it back into her cane. He adjusts the fur cloak around her shoulders, and she reaches round to pull him closer and grab his ass.

“Hey!” He jumps into her, scowling at her eager grin. " _Really_? Right _now?_ Christ, I have such a type. Come on, let’s go. Don’t move quickly. Don’t look suspicious. Don’t grope me.”

“I thought I was the Queen around here,” she says as they casually slip out of the alley. They’re lucky and no one is around. “You should be taking orders from _me_.”

Silver disregards his own advice and rushes them both home. Walking with one leg and crutch in thick mud is already difficult, let alone doing it with an erection.

He unlocks the Inn door as quickly as he can, because Madi is beginning to ignore his other instruction. She laughs as he fumbles with the keys, and it’s a laugh that makes the quiet inside the pub alive as though a hundred people were crammed inside.

“Lead the way, your highness,” he says, locking the door behind them, and she grabs his bloodstained hand, pulling him to the stairs.

* * *

 


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

 

Flint arrives to the hotel early. Christopher had been passed out in his little office, and Flint had no problems slipping out. It’s crowded on Main, and he’s not sure if he’s supposed to be inconspicuous. Abigail had whispered her request, so she’d seemed intent to keep their meeting and their prior relationship a secret, but perhaps her plan had been to tip off the authorities without her husband knowing. In that case, though, she could have easily led them to his workplace.

He just had no idea what she _wanted_ from him, but if he had any sense, he wouldn’t care to find out. He should go home. He should be out looking for Madi. He should be dead.

He should stay out of sight, in case Abigail’s husband is nearby. He moves back into the shadow of the building, hunched over against the cold.

He reaches into his pocket to check the time on Christopher’s pocket watch he’d stolen on a whim. It made him feel empowered. He just hoped he could speak with Abigail before Thomas expected to meet him.

It had just gone half past when again, a quiet voice behind him asks, “Mr. Flint?”

He turns.

She’s a little out of breath when she joins him in the shade of the hotel. She doesn’t look shocked this time. Instead, as soon as they’re mostly out of sight, she flings her arms around his neck. Flint’s hands hang awkwardly in the air.

Into her hair, he says, “I don’t go by that name these days.”

She draws back a little, the smile frozen on her face. “Oh,” she says softly. “Is it — McGraw?”

“No,” Flint says. “You can call me James, though.”

She relaxes once more, pulling away from him. She’s got a glow around her now, he’d never seen before. It reminds Flint of how Miranda had described her as a child.

_I killed your father_ , Flint thinks, but does not say.

“I heard stories,” Abigail says, “that you had died. Stories that you disappeared without a trace. I don’t know why I didn’t believe them, but I never did.”

“I _did_ disappear,” he points out. “I never —” He clears his throat guiltily. “I never heard what happened to you. I’m glad you seem to be doing well.”

Abigail laughs a little. “Very well, thank you.” She places her hands on her stomach. “A little nervous actually. This is my first. Only a little longer to go.”

“Congratulations,” he says, the word dusty on his tongue. “That man, earlier —”

“Theo. My husband. Almost two years now.” She shows him a modest ring. “We’re just here on business. He’s in real estate. We live in New York. We just went into that shop to see about a bassinet.” She stops talking abruptly, like she’s realized she’s rambling.

“He treats you right?” Flint asks.

“Very,” Abigail assures. “He’s sweet to me. It’s his father’s business, but he really wants to be a poet.”

Flint smiles. It doesn’t feel as brittle on his face as he thought it would. He’s happy for her, he notices. She deserves the love of a soft man. A child deserves to have a poet for a father and a saint for a mother.

They smile at each other for a long moment, remembering each other’s shape. They were never anything other than painfully, awkwardly formal, before. But that’s what happens, when you’re among the only people left alive who remember a massacre.

_I killed your father_ , he continues not to say.

“Anyway,” says Abigail, looking away. “I won’t keep you. You… you have a life here, and I just wanted to see you for a moment. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going mad. And I’m glad to see you’re not dead.”

“It was good to see you, too.” Flint says, surprised by how much he means it. The sharp, rolling agony in his stomach has dissipated. Abigail had been kind, back then. He remembers her private thoughts read aloud in the Charles Town square, though at the time they’d been meaningless to him. It had been proof she’d seen all the things in himself he’d desperately hoped were there. She’d seen through Captain Flint, and she’d been kind to him. He’s glad to see she hasn’t been made unkind. He’s glad to know the pain he’s caused her did not make her unkind, the way it had everyone else.

She takes his hand and squeezes it once before letting go. Just as his hand slips away, he hears, “James? Is that you over there?”

Flint freezes. He can’t move, but there’s nothing to stop the sound of Thomas approaching anyway.

“What are you doing over here? Have you found— oh.” Flint can feel the whisper of touch on his lower back when Thomas notices he’s not alone. “Hello.”

When Flint looks back, Abigail is openly shocked once more. Thomas just glances between them, confused but smiling pleasantly. _I killed both your fathers_ , Flint doesn’t mention.

He wants to assure Abigail that, despite her afternoon, most people do _not_ return from the dead, but he can’t. She probably knows anyway. Instead, he sighs and says, “Thomas. Perhaps you may remember Abigail Ashe.”

The smile flips to a frown like pages in the wind. He recognizes the name, though Flint doubts he remembers her face. He pales noticeably, taking the smallest step backwards.

“Good — good Lord,” Thomas says faintly. “You’re Peter’s daughter. Of course. I haven’t seen you since you were…” All of his manners, usually second nature, have fled him. His swallows nervously, looking behind her. “Is your father also here?”

An awkward silence descends. Flint and Abigail look at each other.

“I’m afraid my father has passed,” she says carefully, looking back at Thomas.

The tension eases slightly from Thomas’s shoulders. He still looks wary, but not like he’s about to bolt.

“Oh, I’m— I didn’t know that.” He sneaks a quick glance at Flint, and he must see something on his face, he _must,_ because after the slightest hesitation he says, “Might I ask how it happened?”

Another uncomfortable silence.

“He….” She makes a decent attempt at not looking over at Flint, but she can’t help it. It was quick, but Thomas sees it anyway. “He was killed in the siege of Charles Town.”

Another silence. Thomas is staring at Flint.

“I see,” he says, not looking away. “I remember hearing about that. After the fact. How dreadful.”

“Yes,” Abigail agrees. “Tragic, but it was a few years ago, now. I try not to think about it.”

Thomas frowns at her. “It occurs to me,” he says, folding his arms, “I don’t know how you two know each other.”

“Oh,” says Abigail, smiling nervously. “We met a few…. years ago.” She squares her shoulders, choosing to rush past the echo of her own words. “I was  — in Nassau. I visited with Mrs. Hamilton. She was always exceptionally kind to me.”

The suspicion on Thomas’s face briefly melts away, but now he just looks stricken. “Oh,” he says faintly. “That’s… good to hear. Miranda was an exceptionally kind person.”

“Yes,” Abigail says quickly. She clutches her belly. “Well, it was so good to see you both, but I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. I’m feeling rather tired. If you’re ever in New York…” She lets the empty offer fall to the ground. She smiles at them both, the smile you give while saying goodbye to attendees at a funeral. “It _is_ good to see you both well.” And she leaves without another word.

They stay in the shade of the building. Thomas is glaring at Flint. He’s not looking at Thomas, he’s looking anywhere _but_ at Thomas, but he can feel it, beating down on him like an unforgiving sun on a cloudless day.

“Are you going to say _anything_?” Thomas finally demands. “Anything at all?”

Flint lets out a breath and turns back to the street. “We should see if Silver’s had any luck with Madi,” he says, heading towards home.

“Really?” Thomas says loudly after him. “ _Really?_ That’s all — you are truly _unbelievable_ , do you know that?”

He knocks into Flint’s shoulder as they make their way home, storming as best as he can in the muddy street. Flint stays a few paces behind, taking in the livid lines of his shoulder and spine. He’d been taught to stand that stiffly from the moment he first knew how to stand. It makes Flint’s heart ache, watching Thomas’s bad hand try to clench. The gentry always make themselves appear to be works of art — flat, perfect, not to be touched. When they met, Thomas had been a portrait, full of color and light and beauty, but hung on a wall out of reach. For ten years, Thomas had still been a portrait, gathering dust beneath a sheet in their humid, crumbling home.

There’s no paint in Thomas anymore. He’s wonderfully solid, all weary bones and rushing blood and warm, flushing skin. Silver is always telling him this. He’s a _man_ , not a dream. It never wants to stick in Flint’s head.

Men get angry.

It’s quiet when they get to the Inn. There’s no sign of Silver or Madi, and it makes him even more anxious. He wants to know they’re alright, but he doesn’t know how to say that without pissing Thomas off more for avoiding him. And there’s no answer brief enough that Flint can give him in order to quickly change the subject that would be in any way satisfying.

Thomas stomps up the stairs, removing his hat and coat, every movement rigid and hasty.

Flint follows, slower, gentler. The door to their usual room is shut, but Thomas bypasses it anyway, going to the one they slept in the night before. He stops in the doorway, and when Flint comes up behind him, the pieces of clockwork scattered on the table glimmer in the failing sunlight. Thomas’s face is stricken once more, which seems a little better than angry.

“Is she a risk to us here?”

Flint sighs. “Thomas…”

“ _Is_ _she?_ ”

“No,” Flint says after a moment. “I don’t think so.”

Thomas rounds on him suddenly, back to angry. “James, what the _hell_ was that?”

“She came into the shop today.” He slides passed him to straighten up his broken clock. He should probably light some candles, too, and get the fire going. “Coincidence. I don’t think we have to —”

“Not _that!_ ” says Thomas, slamming his good hand on the table. “James. What the hell was that?”

Flint stops cleaning. “You know what that was. You know exactly what that was.”

“I _know?_ ” Thomas laughs incredulously. “I know _fuck all_ , because you don’t tell me anything!”

“But you know! What good is me _telling_ you about it when already _know?_ What difference does it fucking make?”

Thomas has both fists curled again, pent up and no clue what to do with himself. He clearly wants to do _something_ , though. His face is red and his teeth are clenched. He rarely gets this mad when he gets mad. Propriety deeply ingrained keeps him from fuming even at his most frustrated moments. Usually only Silver brought it out of him.

“It makes a difference!” Thomas clutches the back of a chair, ready to snap it in half. “I want you to talk to me.”

“I talk to you,” Flint insists. “You know what I am, what I _was_ and what that means. You just don’t know _details_ , why do you need the details?”

“I don’t know who you are, don’t you see that? Anything you think I know is just _guesswork_. Can’t you see how that’s infinitely worse?”

“No,” says Flint. “I can’t.” If Thomas just guesses that Flint might be a monster, there will always be a part of him, even the smallest part, that thinks he might not be.

Thomas sighs, looking down. The room is so cold Flint can see his breath.

“You know Peter betrayed us,” Thomas says quietly, trying to reign himself back in. “And you know I already know this.”

Flint’s heart rattles in his chest, shaking like a snared rabbit. “Yes.”

Thomas raises his eyes again. “How did you learn this?’

_I killed your father, too_ , Flint does not say. He doesn’t say anything.

“God!” Thomas explodes suddenly, giving up on calming down. He shoves the chair away. “I love you, but you are the most frustrating, ridiculous person I’ve ever met! Forget about me. How can you not see what locking yourself away does to _yourself?_ I see it all the time, in what you won’t say to me, in what you don’t bother saying to Long, as though just because he bore witness to some of it he had any indication of what you _felt_ ! It’s just guesswork for him, too, and maybe his guess is more accurate than mine, but he doesn’t _know_ you any more than I do. It’s not the _details_ I want to know, it’s _you_. I love you, but you make me so damn angry sometimes I just want to—”

“Go?” Flint asks softly.

“I just want to _punch_ something like an uncivilized animal,” Thomas insists savagely. “I don’t _hit_ people. And I don’t leave.”

“You should.”

Thomas snarls. “I’m not leaving—”

“You should hit me,” Flint says. “I’d deserve it.”

The words seem to have knocked the wind out of him. He stares at Flint, silent.

Flint hasn’t been in a fight in so long. He hasn’t felt fresh pain in ages, only the dull aches of past injuries that make every memory seem a little less real to him. He doesn’t like fighting, but for a good while he couldn’t move without pulling on a healing cut so that it bled again. He used to be able to count passing days by the different shades of his bruises. He doesn’t miss it, but the absence makes him feel so disconnected from his waking life that even when he’s riotously, overwhelming happy, there’s a quiet, sickening dread lurking at the back of his mind. That unsettling feeling that he might be forgetting something.

Perhaps that something is pain.

“You should,” he says again.

“I’m not going to _hit_ you,” Thomas bites out. “Is that how _pirates_ solve every problem they encounter? By drawing blood and trying to kill each other without having a real conversation?”

Flint blinks. “Yeah.” When Thomas rolls his eyes in disgust, Flint sighs and looks away. “We need to find Silver, we need to see if he needs help finding Madi. We don’t have time to talk about this right now, it isn’t the moment for it and I don’t think — _Ow!_ ” He staggers back a step. “You hit me!”

The strike hadn’t connected well, not much force behind it, but Flint still feels a faint sting. He touches his lip, hissing slightly at the contact, and when he pulls back his fingers, there is the faintest smudge of blood.

“You hit me,” he says again, laughing a little.

Thomas looks like he can’t believe it either. He’s covered his mouth tightly with both hands, eyes wider and wetter than an ocean. He’s already back on the other side of the room. “Oh my God,” he says, muffled by his own hands.

Flint smiles, hoping it looks somewhat reassuring, but it pulls at his new cut and he feels a small trickle.

It seems to spur Thomas into moving. He leaps away from Flint and out of the kitchen, crossing the parlor in two long strides. Flint hears the window shudder open, and before he can even ask if he’s planning on jumping out or something, Thomas is back, packing a handful of snow into his handkerchief.

“Sit down,” he says, voice still panicky and high. “Please.”

Flint sits down in the chair Thomas had shoved earlier. The room is even colder with the window still opened. Thomas grabs another chair and sits down with him, their knees gently knocking together.

As delicately as he can, Thomas presses the cold, covered snow against his lip.

“I can’t believe you hit me,” says Flint, but he’s still smiling. Every part of him feels twisted inside, except for his heart, which swells at Thomas’s attention. And his lip, which stings.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Thomas mutters, intent on his lip. “I can’t believe I did that. I’ve never just _hit_ someone not in self-defence. Not even as a child. I’m so sorry.” He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, he looks angry again. “Do _you_ feel better now that I’ve done this?”

Flint thinks about it. The pain is fresh. The blow had been awkward, and he doubts it’ll even bruise, so all he feels is Thomas’s warmth, Thomas’s misery, Thomas’s love. The blood he tastes on his tongue isn’t his own — it’s the blood of hundreds of men, shed a long time ago. He realizes, finally, he’s been hiding away for his own comfort, which is really the last thing he deserves.

“No,” he answers, no longer smiling. He places his hand over Thomas’s, helping to keep the snow in place. It chills him so much it makes all his bones rattle. “Ask me again.”

Thomas’s brow creases in confusion, his eyes roaming Flint’s face. After a moment, he asks, “How did you learn of Peter’s betrayal?”

“He told me,” Flint says.

Thomas nods, once. “ _When_ did he tell you?”

Flint could lie. He could so easily lie. He could say he learned this between Thomas being taken from them and leaving England. He could lie.

He says, “Shortly before I ordered Charles Town destroyed.”

He looks away and waits. And then the hand under his withdraws, coldness leaving his face, warmth leaving his side. He hears Thomas stand, his chair legs squeaking on the floor.

When he glances back up, Thomas is on the other side of the kitchen, pacing in a very small circle. He looks as shocked and confused and out-of-sorts as he did those late nights in his study, after failing to convince some Lord or General or scholar of his worldview. Except this time, he’s close to panic, and looking everywhere but at Flint.

“How—” he chokes out. “ _How_ — James — There were _people_ in that town who had nothing to do with — What would that _change_ — why would I ever _want_ —”

“Stop.” Flint feels like he should stand, but it seems he has cannons strapped to his boots. He can’t move. “No. I didn’t…. I didn't do it for you. I did it for her.”

“Who? Abigail? Wh—”

“No.” Flint’s mouth is completely dry. “For Miranda.”

Thomas stops moving. He might even stop breathing. His hands drop to his side, his shoulders slumping like a hanged man’s. He’s got tears in his eyes, but they haven’t fallen yet. He says, “ _Tell_ me.”

Flint swallows, leaning back in his chair. After a second thought, he presses the snowy handkerchief up to his chin again. It smells like Thomas.

“We sailed to Charles Town to deliver Abigail,” he starts. “She’s been kidnapped by other pirates who had intended to ransom her. She — we discovered this, and got her back. We hoped to return her so that it might grant us an audience with Peter. We — I was hoping to speak to him about…. Pardons. For me and my men.”

Thomas sits down heavily in his chair. “ _Pardons,”_ he repeats, anguished.

Flint nods. He doesn’t know why this is so hard to tell. It happened once, a lifetime ago, but he’s relived it so many times it could be happening at this very moment. “I wanted a new start. We both did. We _all_ did. Well. Most of us did. Silver didn’t think much of the idea. But it worked, and we got our audience. Peter was — shocked, but welcoming. Very gracious to have us in his home, overwhelmed at his daughter’s safety. And he thought he had a good chance of getting us our pardons. But I would have had to sacrifice myself to do it.

“I would have been laid bare before Parliament — _we_ would have been — and I was ready to do it. But during the negotiations, Miranda, livid at the idea of me being thrown to the wolves, noticed a clock on the wall. A clock that belonged to you two. She made the accusation, and eventually, he admitted it. Claimed he’d been pressured to speak against us, but… I couldn’t even react to the idea, I was so surprised. He was our _friend_. But Miranda was enraged, and the more aggravated she got, the louder she got. You remember what that was like? She kept calm half the time so she might surprise us and yell the whole estate down when she was really annoyed with us.”

Thomas smiles at the memory, but it’s weak. He grips Flint’s wrist though, and even though it’s his bad hand, his hold is strong.

“She was just standing there,” Flint says, his voice breaking a little, “telling him he should pay for what he’d done to us, that the town he bought with our misery should burn, and then —”

Flint hadn’t even been able to say this to Silver, that morning in the cabin. For all the times he’d seen it in his dreams, he never spoken of this day aloud.

“Then one of Peter’s men shot her through the head,” Flint says. “Mid-sentence. One minute she was there, and the next…”

It’s better she went so quickly. That’s the way they should go, if there was ever a choice, not drawn out and pained. But he hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye, which might be what hurt the most. At the time, both Hamiltons had been gone from his life in the blink of an eye, and when he’d been up on that platform, preparing to be judged by Charles Town, he’d hated them both for leaving him behind without a final word.

It’s fully dark outside and they’d lit no candles, but Flint could see the wet tracks of tears shining on Thomas’s face from the dim street lamps outside. He doesn’t make a sound when he cries, and Flint can’t remember if that’s a recent trait. Like he might have had to learn how to sob quietly, all those years imprisoned.

“I was arrested,” Flint continues. “They tried to convict me for piracy, but I escaped. In the madness, I was able to run Peter through, and I felt his blood on my hands, but I wasn’t able to bring her with me. So when we got back to my ship, I ordered them to carry out her final wish. To see that civilization that had hurt her, that had cast her aside, that had degraded her, burned to ashes. So I did it. For her. I didn’t think of you once while I was doing it, I’m sorry.”

Thomas jerks at the apology. “I —” He closes his mouth.

Flint wonders if this is what Thomas looked like over a decade ago, the night he’d been taken. Crying in the dark, struggling with words, struggling with movement, urging Miranda to take care of him when he was gone. He’d never been able to ask Miranda about that night. He’d been too cowardly, too cold. He’d held her while she wept in her sleep and never mentioned it once the sun rose. He knew what they’d been to each other, and at the time he thought he’d been doing her a kindness, pretending her pain was altogether gone.

He wasted so much of his life, not saying a damn thing.  

The baffled rage he’d seen in Thomas earlier is gone. Now, there’s a look Flint doesn’t understand at all.

In a strange tone, Thomas says, “It’s alright.”

Which is the last thing Flint expects to hear. He opens his mouth to ask _what_ was alright, when two candlelights appear in the doorway.

“Um,” says Silver, frowning at them both. “Is everything okay in here?”

Madi is a step behind him. Both of them are mostly undressed, hair down and mussed. Madi’s only wearing her skirt, with a blanket around her shoulders, Silver with one around his waist. His face glows with confusion, his chest gleams with sweat, in a way that would be distractingly welcome if Flint’s heart wasn’t in such peril.

“It’s fine,” Thomas says, hastily wiping his face and standing. “We’re alright. It’s good. Madi, hullo. Glad to have you back. It’s alright,” he says again, putting a hand on Flint’s shoulder to prevent him from rising, too. “It’s alright. I just need a drink, is all. Excuse me.”

He takes the candle out of Silver’s hand and disappears down the hall.

* * *

 


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

 

Silver debates himself for a quiet minute, but in the end he decides to put his trousers back on. He also grabs a bottle of rum and his sweater. Thomas had said he needed a drink, but the only liquor down in the Inn are his untapped kegs, and he knows for a fact Thomas can drink most of one by himself if so inclined. He also knows Thomas can’t tap a keg to save his life, so he doesn’t rush.

When he gets downstairs, Thomas is rifling under the bar. His eyebrows raise a bit when he sees Silver, but he says nothing. His face is still a little damp.

Silver sets the bottle on the bar, and Thomas stares at it for a moment before straightening. He grabs two glasses and sets them down. Silver smiles at that. Most men who needed a drink the way Thomas needs a drink would just drink straight from the bottle, but that would never be him.

“I know what’ll cheer you up,” Silver says.

He snorts, uncorking the bottle, pouring himself a healthy amount and ignoring the other glass. Without looking at Silver, he says, “I doubt it.”

“Madi and I permanently disfigured a man trying to kidnap her today.”

Thomas perks up. “Really?”

“Want me to tell you about it?”

He looks, for a moment, interested. Then a strange look passes over his face and he sighs, wiping absently at his cheek. “Some other time,” he mutters, and takes a long drink.

Silver studies his neck as he swallows. “Just tell me when.”

Thomas sets down his empty glass and refills it. “I suppose James told you what happened?”

Silver shakes his head. “I left him with Madi. I came to see you.”

Another strange, yet different, look. Thomas takes a smaller sip, watching him.

“Come sit,” Silver says, tilting his head towards the armchairs they sat in last night.

As Thomas rounds the bar, he says, “We ran into an old friend today. Abigail Ashe.”

Silver frowns. “I know that name.”

“Young girl.” At Silver’s continued confusion, Thomas adds, “Charles Town.”

It’s ridiculous. It’s not real. It’s all in his head. Still, he feels a flash of hot pain at the end of his leg anyway at the name.

“Oh,” Silver says.

“That’s right,” says Thomas. “You were there, weren’t you?” He sits down heavily, his drink sloshing onto his hand.

He’s not sure how to talk about this. Maybe he should have spoken to Flint before coming down here. Flint likely would have stopped him if there is a lie he’s supposed to maintain, and anyway Flint’s sin is to lie by omission with Thomas. If he ends up filling in some blanks, he’s only doing Flint a favor. “I was. In a way.”

“How could you let him _do_ it?” Thomas’s voice is thick with emotion, gesturing angrily with his glass. “Destroy a whole town like that? I remember hearing the number of casualties…”

He probably shouldn’t, but Silver finds himself laughing anyway, short and incredulous. “At the time, I was in no position to stop him, even if I had been around. But I wasn’t at his side when he gave the order.” He sets the candle down on a nearby table, and then sets himself down in Thomas’s lap.

Thomas jumps, spilling a little more rum onto both of them. He eyes Silver suspiciously. “You’re not trying to distract me, are you?”

“I’m just getting comfortable,” Silver insists, but damn it, he’d been promised an _intriguing_ night and these fucking people he’s tied to keep trying to ruin it. He settles his crutch on the floor, in reach, and lets his legs dangle over the arm of the chair

Thomas thumbs absently at the stitching of his sweater. “Where were you that day, if not at his side?”

It feels strange, having a history he doesn’t mind sharing, for all the memory pains him. Perhaps it’s because there are witnesses to his past still in his life, who haven’t run screaming from him. Perhaps it must not be so terrible.

“I was below deck,” he says, “Getting my leg removed.”

Thomas gapes at him. “But, you told me once….something about a mutiny?”

“It was a busy day for the Captain.”

“So you mean James was _there_ and he didn’t stop them?”

“You misunderstand.” Silver gently pulls the glass of rum out of Thomas’s hand. “The mutineers who injured me were already dead by the time he’d boarded. This was my crew, trying to save my life. The Captain was — distracted when he came on board, but had he not been, there wasn’t anything different he could have done by that point.” He takes a drink, wincing at the burn that trickled down his throat all the way to the end of his leg. “I tried to fight them off. I didn’t want them to do it. If he’d been there, the only thing that would have likely happened is he would have just convinced me faster to let it happen.”

He’s pictured it before, what Flint might have done if he’d been there. If he would have demanded they stop, if he would have tried to get him a real doctor. If he would have just put a bullet between his eyes to silence the screaming, as an act of mercy. If he would have held his hand until he passed out, and not make a sound when Silver squeezed as hard as he could. If he would have assured him that he, like the crew, would take care of Silver. Every imagined scenario made him sure of one thing. He is infinitely glad Flint hadn’t been there.

“The man I knew before Charles Town,” Silver says, “and the man I knew afterwards were significantly different. He was not unfeeling to the incident, if that’s what you’re concerned about. Whether it was the carnage, or the loss he sustained, or both, it haunted him. I believe it likely still does. He was forever changed by losing Mrs Barlow, we all could see it.”

Thomas blinks. “Mrs —”

“Right,” Silver says. “I suppose I mean Mrs Hamilton, then. I never spoke to her, you know. Every time she glanced at me, I was utterly petrified. And jealous, though it took me a while to realize _that._ But she probably suspected. She could see right through me, I knew it. I’d been a fool and she didn’t seem to have any patience for my kind.”

Thomas is smiling, his eyes shining. “She didn’t,” he says. “God, I miss her.”

Silver strokes his hair. “He does, too.”

“I know, I know we both do,” Thomas says miserably. “That’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

Thomas sighs, taking his glass back and finishing the rest of his rum. He leans back in the chair, tilting his head into Silver’s fingers. “When I first heard what he did, I was livid. All that death and destruction, because he was a pirate, and he was a pirate because of _me_. But then he tells me, no, sorry, other times — sure, but this time was all about _Miranda._ He told me exactly what happened, finally lets me know how she was taken from us, that she never got to know how she’d been _lied_ to about me, that I only got _one_ of them back. She never knew and was so capriciously taken from us —” He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. “And he tells me, that’s why he did it, and my first thought was — _good_. It deserved to burn. Peter deserved to die. They all deserved it. It wasn’t enough.”

Silver watches him drop the glass on the floor and rub his eyes. He waits for him to stop, but Thomas keeps them covered.

“Let me see if I understand now,” Silver says slowly. “You’re down here all upset, not because he killed people, but because you’re a _hypocrite?_ God, you are something else.”

“You don’t get it,” Thomas murmurs sullenly, face still buried in his hands. “I think my father would have been fine with me being a sodomite if it hadn’t gotten in the way of his political endeavors. But to be a sodomite _and_ an apostate….”

Silver doesn’t want to speak to that, mostly because he’s pretty sure Flint also killed Thomas’s father. But he’s not likely to bring that up tonight.

“And just now!” Thomas bursts out, finally lowering his hands. “You telling me about _disfiguring_ someone because you _know_ it will make me _happy?_ And it does! Should I be taking pleasure in violence done to another man, even one as despicable as that?”

“Yes,” says Silver. “Obviously.”

Thomas pauses at that before sighing. “Okay, fine. But my point remains. I was never a violent person. It’s never been in my nature. When other boys at school would roughhouse, the sight of it made me queasy. I never thought myself above others for my pacifism, but I had to find pride in it, to be loud about it. If I was to be different, I was to be unashamed of it. It was a part of me as much as…” He touches Silver’s stomach, feeling him through the wool. “I had hoped I was not so changed by the experiences of my life. I knew I was not the _same_ , but I had hoped…”

It’s different, what Silver’s feeling. It’s not like when he needs to comfort Flint or Madi. There’s always a fear, there, that he’ll say the wrong thing and fuck everything up. But he doesn’t feel that with Thomas because they so rarely say the right thing to each other anyway. Silver understands him, he empathizes with him, but he’s not afraid of him. He finds he quite likes this feeling.

“Flint did terrible things,” he says, “in your name. “You know this. Losing you….changed him, as much as losing your wife. But tell me this. In your time locked away, you must have met some truly awful people. Was there one who was exceptionally cruel to you? One you probably still dream about? One who’ll never leave you?”

A cold, haunted look appears on Thomas’s face. “Yes,” he says quietly. Then he scowls. “You’re a terrible comfort, Long.”

Silver smiles. “Can you imagine this man — say, with his mother, being rocked to sleep as an infant? Picking flowers for a neighborhood girl? Can you imagine him speaking gently to his horse when it got spooked, or helping a local farmer birth a calf? Can you imagine him being adored by his children, being devoted and loving to his wife?”

Thomas stares at him for a long second. He doesn’t look like Thomas at all when he says, “No. I can’t.”

“Because who he is, is who he’s shown himself to be,” Silver says. Feeling bad, he starts stroking Thomas’s hair a little harder, brushing at the nape of his neck. “That’s all we are to each other. So while logically, there’s a good chance some of that might be true, you’d never accept it. And why should you? He was a bastard.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point, Tomcat,” and Silver draws his chin up, so they’re eye to eye, “is that the converse is true. The James you know is sweet, and tender, and funny, and he loves you, even though you like to put your cold toes on his legs every morning so he wakes up screaming. And he may have been unspeakably awful to others, and violent, and hateful. You know, logically, this must have happened. But you’re having trouble accepting it. And why should you? All he is, is who he shows you he is.”

Thomas shakes his head. “It’s not as simple as that.”

“No,” Silver agrees. “But it should be. It can be. For instance, all you’ve ever shown me to be is, frankly, a complete prat, who overthinks everything and never shuts up about _anything_ and who can’t sing a lick. The only thing I’ve ever seen of you capable of inflicting violence is your tendency to pull my hair a little harder than necessary.”

“Cheek,” Thomas says, but he’s smiling again. He tugs on a lock of Silver’s hair, but not very hard. Then he sobers up a little and says, softly, “I hit James earlier.”

Silver blinks. “You _what?_ ”

Thomas just nods sadly.

“I can’t believe this. You punched Captain Flint. I’m Long John Silver, and I never got to punch Captain Flint. Life is so unfair.”

“I’m serious,” Thomas says, pouting. “It was awful, I hated it.”

“How utterly wasted an experience on you.” Silver sighs, then frowns dramatically. “Come to think of it, I don’t know anyone alive who’s punched Captain Flint. Like they weren’t long for this world afterwards, if you catch my meaning.”

“Okay.” Thomas rolls his eyes. “You’ve made your point.”

“I’m just saying, I’d sleep with one eye open if I were you— Ow.” Silver rubs at his his now stinging scalp, shaking his hair away from Thomas’s evil fingers. He smiles. “Alright, calm down. Did you even bruise him?”

“I doubt it, I regretted it even as my fist was moving.” Thomas shrugs helplessly. “His lip bled a little, though.”

“You hit his _lips?_ ” Now Silver is annoyed. “How dare you.”

Thomas glares at him, thoroughly unamused, until Silver strokes behind his ear, and Thomas’s eyes flutter shut with a sigh.

“I’d better go make sure he’s alright,” he says eventually. “Do you think he’ll… understand? Why I got upset?”

Silver thinks he’ll be overjoyed, but there’s no reason Thomas needs to know that much detail. “Yes. Of course. He loves you. But let’s go quickly, he’s been fretting over this exact scenario for ages now and he’s probably in a right state.”

Thomas helps him upright, and while he’s ensuring Silver’s crutch is firmly under his arm, Silver takes advantage of his distraction and kisses him. It’s a chaste and hasty kiss. His face feels hot, especially when Thomas leans back in surprise. They rarely kiss without Flint being present. He feels like he’s taking something of Flint’s each time he does, even though he knows it’s not true. He’s just taken so many things from him since they’ve known each other, it’s a hard feeling to shake.

Plus, Thomas always looks unbearably smug when they do, which only gets worse when Silver says, “Um… after you’ve apologized for your strop, I thought we could.... All of us, that is….”

He looks like he’s about to protest _strop_ , but when he gets Silver’s meaning, he’s all smiles. It’s not a smile fit for polite society. Silver wonders where he learned it.

“Oh, you _thought_ , did you?” Thomas hums, drawing him towards the stairs. “Well, I don’t think we’ll be able to get to _everything_ tonight. But I think we should make a valiant effort to try.”

Thomas possesses an amazing ability to bounce back. Silver supposes they all do, in a fashion, but Thomas just might be better at separating things in his mind. So while the blue of his eyes are still lightly rimmed red, there is a heat in the curl of his lips that probably looks identical to the one he first gave to Flint, years ago that set them all on the path to this very moment.

* * *

 


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

 

This is why Flint loves Madi. She lets him sit silently with his face buried in his hands for at least five minutes after Thomas and Silver leave. He appreciates it.

But eventually the cold is too much for them both, and he lets her drag him back to the other room by the elbow. The room is stifling warm, with several lanterns as well as a fire going. He finally takes off his coat, his body moving stiffly. He feels unbelievably old.

Madi pushes him down onto the bed to help him take off his boots. He knows she’s pitying him right now, but for once he thinks he might need it.

“Why did you run away from Silver?” he asks her.

“What did you do to upset Thomas?” she asks him.

They regard each other in the yellow glow of the room.

“So,” says Flint. “Have you read any good books lately?”

Madi snorts, sitting next to him on the bed. She makes sure to sit with her good ear facing him. “No,” she says. “I’ve been too busy.”

He’s about to say something equally innocuous, like how it had been a lot easier to find time to read with all the idle hours at sea, but then Madi takes his hand. Her palm is warm and dry against his, the blanket slipping from her shoulders, just enough to expose the hollow of her clavicle. Anguish grips him, shivering down his body like an actual pain, and he squeezes her hand tight.

She says, “How did you do it? How did you give up fighting?”

He hadn’t really given it up. It had been taken from him. But it seems foolish to complain about it now, when he’d been given so much back.

“With another fight,” Flint admits. “These things — you’re not meant to just walk away from them. We think we’re supposed to win or die. Maybe we are. But there’s no shame in changing what you’re fighting for. Who you’re fighting for.”

Madi nods once. She rests her head on his shoulder, looking down at their clasped hands.

“I’m not staying here forever. But I told Silver he is free to come back with me, if he wants.”

He can’t help it. The hand holding Madi’s tightens, his knuckles whitening. For a moment, he can’t breathe. He’d been right. He’ll always be fighting.

“The offer extends to you both too, of course,” Madi says mildly, cupping the hand currently threatening to break her other one. “If you ever want to escape this wretched cold.”

Flint swallows. He forces himself to relax. “What…. what did he say?”

“He told me about some plan you and he have to steal Thomas away once his smallpox epidemic strikes.” Madi shrugs. “I trust you two know what you’re doing.”

“You’re the only person in history to ever do so,” Flint says, finally able to release his breath.

“Thomas trusts you.”

The panic that had just uncoiled in his belly quickly tightens again. “Perhaps before….”

They sit in silence for another moment. Her fingers dance against the back of his hand, moving between each knuckle like the tip of a quill, writing something he can’t read.

“I don’t need to know about Silver’s past to understand him,” she says finally. “I know the way he plays music like it’s nothing, but a crease appears between his eyes before he sings, like he’s thinking of something he can’t remember, just for a moment. I know he flinches at bells, that the sound of children crying seems to always catch him off guard, that he can eat anything as long as he’s sure you’re eating first and you have enough. What are these things, if not understanding? I understand Silver now. I know why he did what he did to us. I know what it cost him. I know it’s the only way to love someone, by understanding.”

“So why did you run from him?” he asks again, because he wants to ask, _so why did he run from me?_

She raises her head, and Flint shifts to look her in the eye. The scarring on her cheek is lost in the shadow. Her smile, though sad, is not.

“Not so much running. More hiding.” She raises an eyebrow. “But there’s always one you can’t hide from, isn’t there?”

Before he can answer, the door to the apartment opens, and Thomas and Silver are peering in at them through the darkness. Thomas’s face is dry, and when he looks at Flint, he’s got a small, encouraging smile on his face.

“I know things are quite serious right now,” Madi says lowly, “but would you like to see Silver overreact?”

Flint turns to ask what she means, and Madi kisses him softly. He feels her smile when he responds in surprise, suddenly enamored by the smoothness of her chin, the little bite of her teeth on his lower lip. They are still, but Flint feels movement in his heart, as though he is in the back of a carriage moving through a busy street. It’s one of the sweetest kisses he’s ever had, one he would have enjoyed longer were it not for the sound of Silver’s crutch crashing to the floor and Thomas exclaiming, “Good Christ!”

They look up to find Silver in Thomas’s arms, face utterly dazed and red, half sunken to the floor. Thomas is scowling at the both of them. “Haven’t you put this poor boy through enough today?”

“No, I don’t think so,” says Madi.

Thomas seems to be pondering that, even as he’s struggling to get Silver upright. Silver is still gaping at them like a hooked fish, so Thomas just leans him against the wall. He picks up his crutch, saying, “I see your point. But first, might I…?”

Madi looks at Flint again, and her smile is not as playful, but just as hopeful. Her lips are still wet. She kisses his knuckles and rises, fixing her blanket as she takes the crutch from Thomas. She sticks it under Silver’s arm and ushers him out of the room, Silver still pink and dumbfounded.

Thomas kneels in front of him. He holds Flint’s hand just as Madi did.

“It’s alright,” he says again, although there’s less panic now. “I’m sorry if I startled you, leaving as I did. I just need a moment to think.”

“Alright,” Flint repeats. “And….what do you think?”

Thomas kisses him. It’s loving, tender. The faintest hint of filth.

“You don’t have to tell me everything you’ve been through,” he says eventually. “I haven’t told you everything either. Maybe one day, we’ll be old enough where these things don’t even matter anymore and we can say them out loud. Or we’ll be old enough to forget they ever occurred. It doesn’t matter. I just want to be old enough with you. I love you.”

Flint swallows. “But….”

“I don’t know,” Thomas interrupts, bringing Flint’s hand to cup his own cheek, “if understanding comes from loving you, or if loving comes from our ability to understand one another. All I know is that as we were separated by miles, by time, by death, we were each of us growing and changing and becoming, so that when we were finally brought back together again, you still fit into me as perfectly as I do you. I think that’s a wonder.” He turns his lips into Flint’s palm. “I think that’s alright.”

And then Thomas has to rise and wrap his arms around Flint, because Flint needs to bury his face into Thomas’s stomach. It’s the only hope he has to not come apart at the seams. Thomas strokes his back, soothing him as he shakes through a decade’s worth of misery, sinking out of him to the bottom of the sea like forgotten treasure.

It’s only a few minutes, but when Flint leans back, the breath he takes feels like his first one in years.

“Are you alright now?” Thomas asks, rubbing his head. “Only you realize I’m not stupid, right? I’m not sure what you thought I would have done _now_ , hearing any details of your past crimes, if I didn’t do anything when I first learned you were alive, and a _pirate_. I dealt with that realization privately and respectfully, thank you very much. You didn’t even notice.”

Flint frowns, brushing his cheek on Thomas’s arm. “When was that?”

“Those first few days, when you were sleeping on the plantation.” Thomas’s smile is teasing. “It was quite a shock, you realize. Not only were you living, yet unconscious in my bedroll, but you were the same pirate I’d heard spoken of in the same sentences as Blackbeard and Henry Avery and Captain Hornigold and Charles Vane.”

Flint snorts.

“What?”

“It’s — nothing.”

“No, go on.”

“Really.”

Thomas narrows his eyes. “How many of those men did you kill?”

Flint hesitates. “Only Hornigold.” The memory of which still feels very good, Flint is unsurprised to learn. “Avery was before my time. And I only ever tried to kill Teach and Vane when they were trying to kill me, too.”

Thomas keeps frowning at him for a second, before rolling his eyes. “ _Pirates._ ” But he kisses Flint on the forehead, and it takes everything inside Flint not to start weeping or start laughing. Because he knows if he does either, he’ll never stop.

“Speaking of,” says Thomas. He turns his head, arms still wrapped around Flint. “Long? Madi?”

Silence from the hallway.

“Long John _Silver_ _!_ ” Thomas calls, scowling.

A thud, a muttered curse, and a second later, Madi and Silver are in the doorway, attempting to look casual. They’re both breathing heavily, Silver’s neck is wet with red marks, and once again he’s without a shirt on.

“Oh, good,” he says, fidgeting on his crutch. “We’re good, right?”

“We’re good,” says Flint.

“I told you it would be fine,” Silver says. “No one ever listens to me.”

“I certainly heard what you said downstairs,” Thomas says. “What was that question you asked me before we came up?”

Silver flushes all the way down to his neck, glaring at Thomas.

“Hmm?” Thomas prompts, raising an eyebrow. “No? You’ve forgotten already?”

“I hate you.”

Thomas smiles pleasantly. “That’s quite the opposite of what you implied downstairs. Honestly, I thought it was society types like myself who were meant to be prudish.”

“Like _yourself?_ Might I remind you who’s currently squatting in a building I own?”

Madi raises an eyebrow at Flint, silently asking if they’ll continue this way all night. Flint stands, because the answer is yes, and because he finally understands what they’re talking about.

He takes off his shirt. Madi drops her blanket. Silver and Thomas both shut up.

“So,” says Flint. “How are we going to do this?”

The room is silent with possibilities.

Flint is happy to take the initiative, though, moving to untuck Thomas’s shirt from his trousers. Except the second he touches him, Thomas steps back with a scowl.

“Madi,” he says, removing his own shirt. “Could you come here, please?”

Flint frowns at him as he and Madi switch places. She looks perfectly serene as she passes him, her skirt grazing his arm as she goes to stand toplessly beside Thomas. Flint stands next to Silver, whose face is unreadable, watching them.

Thomas loved Miranda, but he’d confessed a long time ago that though he could appreciate the aesthetics of the female form, it aroused no pleasure in him the way it did most men. Looking at Miranda in the nude, he’d said, was no different than gazing at a Grecian statue of some lost deity — beautifully fine craftsmanship, lovely to behold, but he never had to be told twice not to touch.

So it’s not surprising when he’s able to keep his eyes on Madi’s face and not her chest.

“I’m sure you’re just as tired as I am,” he says to her, “of these two always trying to take charge of things.”

Madi smirks, her eyes flickering to them. “When I first met them,” she says, “I admit I found it extremely annoying.”

Thomas sighs sadly. “The two of us are a Lord and a Princess —”

“Queen, now,” Madi interrupts, then shakes her head at Flint’s frown.

Thomas blinks, but continues on. “A Queen and a Lord. And them? Just a couple of filthy _pirates_ , are they not? Truly, they’re mad to think they’re ever the ones in charge here.”

“Too much sanity…” Madi murmurs, smiling at Flint, who thinks his heart might stop.

Thomas takes her hand, and draws her down to sit on the bed with him. He leans into her good ear, but says loud enough for them all to hear, “I’m sure you know how to make Long beg for mercy, yes? Let’s see what else we can make them beg for.”

And Madi says, “Strip.”

Beside him, Silver doesn’t even hesitate. He’s untying his laces and letting his trousers fall, gaze stuck on where Thomas is slowly inching Madi’s skirt up her knee.

Flint follows, albeit a little slower. He, at least, has never been bare in front of Madi, and he twitches a little under her gaze. Her back is straight, her breasts rising perfectly and falling perfectly, her eyes glowing as she takes in Silver and Flint, standing before her. They are close enough that their knuckles brush with each ragged breath.

The two of them spent years rebelling against a monarchy, but now a Queen says, “Come here, then.” And they go.

“I’m fairly certain you’re meant to kneel before her,” Thomas tells Silver.

It’s a testament to how far gone he is, that Silver has nothing to say to that. He looks at both of them, still flushed, before gently sliding to the floor. He uses his crutch to brace himself, and then lets it fall to the floor, unneeded.

“You too, darling,” Thomas says to Flint. “I know people don’t typically kneel to Lords, but we’ll just have to improvise.”

Flint smiles, even as he sinks to his knees. He hasn’t seen Thomas like this in awhile. It’s not the overconfidence of the prince, or the ferocity of the prisoner. This is Thomas at his core — Thomas at his most base level. Thomas the storyteller.

He used to love dictating to Flint and Miranda what to do, how to move, how he felt, where to touch. It might have been annoying if they hadn’t loved him so, if he hadn’t loved them so much as to know exactly what they wanted before they themselves knew. He’d been holding himself back with Silver in the mix now. Maybe he still sees Silver as just Flint’s. Perhaps he’s less sure of himself in regards to Silver’s desires.

But what Silver wants now is pretty clear to everyone as he starts running his mouth along Madi’s exposed calf, eyes closed in bliss. He edges her skirt up higher around her waist, even though she seems satisfied for the time being with him just kissing her knee.

Flint leans in to bite into Thomas’s neck. He wants to kiss, but knows his mouth is to be used for other things.

They’re all crowded so close — Madi and Thomas on the bed, his arm around her back, Flint and Silver shoulder to shoulder on their knees. He can hear every wet suck, every gasp, every nail against skin.

Then Thomas says to Madi, “Last night, you said you were _intrigued_. Would you like to hear about the first time I fucked your husband?”

Flint groans into Thomas’s skin, half a laugh, half a memory of that night. Silver moans lowly into Madi’s inner thigh, causing Madi to moan too, clutching at his hair. She gives a shaky nod.

“You see,” Thomas says, voice hitching a little as he leans into Flint’s mouth. He fists the back of Flint’s head, keeping him there. “We’d been intimate already, but we had yet to actually fuck. Neither one of us could decide who should get to go first. We kept expecting it to happen naturally, but it mostly just turned into us wrestling.”

Madi huffs at that, smiling with her eyes closed. “ _Boys_ ,” she says.

Flint murmurs in agreement. Thomas grabs his hand and presses it into his crotch. Flint can feel him straining, familiar and heavy against his fingers. He strokes Thomas lightly, still nipping at his jaw. Flint could tease, too.

“So,” Thomas continues, a little breathless now, “we decided to flip a coin.”

Madi’s laugh is the same as Flint’s, rumbling deep in their throats, warm and slightly delirious. Flint glances over out the corner of his eye. SIlver is still buried between her legs, seemingly focused only on sucking on her thigh, but his face is bright red.

Flint is an idiot. He can’t believe he ever let himself feel disconnected from this, even for a second. He doesn’t know what to do with all the love in his heart. It threatens to overwhelm him now, but the last thing he wants to do is be away from it. _This_ is really how people are meant to die. Not long and painful, not sudden and lost — but utterly consumed by love.

“And do you know what he did, when the coin landed and he saw that he had lost?” Thomas takes his hand off of Flint’s and cards his fingers through Silver’s hair, pushing his curls away from his warm face. “He _smiled._ Can you believe that?”

“I can,” Madi gasps. “He’s smiling now.”

Flint starts kissing Thomas lower, alternating between gentle swipes of tongue and sharp bites whenever he feels like it. He rubs his beard against his own teeth marks, just for that extra twitch in Thomas’s belly. Finally, he unlaces Thomas’s breeches and pulls out his cock.

His was not the first cock, besides his own, Flint ever saw. His was not even the first cock he ever touched. But it was the first one he ever loved, and he can’t help but smile fondly at it every time he sees it. Holding Thomas in his hand, he once again feels young and eager and petrified all at once. For so long he’d thought he’d never feel that way again.

Thomas is momentarily distracted by Flint sucking hard on his rib cage while running his thumb over the head of his cock. He curls around Flint a little, moaning louder than any of them.

He has to take a couple deep breaths before continuing. “He smiled… He smiled because he knew he wanted nothing more than to be _filled_ , he was desperate to be stuffed, and he’d seen...ah, _God_ , he’d...seen me giving it to James and he wanted it so bad. Didn’t you, Long?”

Silver can’t say anything. He’s finally reached Madi’s cunt, if the sounds she’s making are any indication. He moans deeply into her, neither agreeing with Thomas nor denying it. His whole body is flushed hot, right down to his pink cock lying heavy and wet and against his thigh.

Watching Madi jerk up into Silver’s mouth makes Flint’s own mouth water. He sits back on his heels and finally swallows Thomas all the way down. For a brief moment today, he’d been certain this would be lost to him. There may be no assurances in this life, but he’s going to make damn sure having this is one of them. Thomas is thick all the way around, and the cut in Flint’s lip pulls as he opens wide enough to accommodate the fullness of him. He moves up and down, sucking fast.

Thomas is valiantly still trying to tell his story, even as his knees close around Flint’s head. “ _Ah,_ God, that — he… I wasn’t just going to give it to him, like he wanted. If he was so pleased by the outcome, I had to make him _work_ for it — Christ, right _there_ , I — I had…. I had him flat on his belly, opening him up with my tongue until he was weeping with want, weren’t you, love?”

Silver digs his nails into Flint’s thigh, and Flint feels the sensation lighting up every part of his body. Silver is moaning continuously into Madi now. Flint’s not sure how he’s able to breathe, she’s wrapped so tightly around him, gripping his hair as she fucks his face.

Thomas leans back suddenly, still in Flint’s mouth. Flint leans back but not away, running his tongue over the slit in the head of his cock. Thomas nearly drops the jar of oil he’d been grabbing from the bedside.

Shakily, he hands it to Flint. He looks up at him, raising an eyebrow, and Thomas jerks his head towards Silver.

“When he was loose,” Thomas says, then cuts himself off , distracted as Flint slicks up two fingers and starts teasing Silver’s entrance. Silver jumps a little in surprise, but then widens his legs as much as he can, still tonguing Madi’s folds. Thomas’s eyes burn into him like the spark to a fuse. “When he was loose, I had him fuck himself on my fingers. I kept busy with James, kissing him and touching him and making Long watch while he bounced on my hand, stretching himself open for me.”

God, Flint has to close his eyes against the memory of it. Silver had been so desperate, so ready for him, and Thomas had been so desperate, too. Wanting nothing more than to go down in Silver’s history as one of the best fucks he ever had. Wanting Silver to ache for him as much as he aches for Flint, if only for a single night.

He dips a single knuckle inside Silver, and it goes in easily. From the proximity of the oil to the bed, he guesses Silver and Madi had been exploring this a little earlier themselves. It explains why Silver is so desperate, so pliant, all red and willing and inching back on Flint’s fingers, too.

Flint hasn’t had to multitask like this since his men had been staging a mutiny while some other men had been blowing up his ship. He knows how to work Thomas’s cock effortlessly, easily, sucking tight as he pulled up, tonguing along the underside vein as he went down, messy and wet so Thomas could see the spit shine on his face. He knows how to spread Silver open, gentle as his fingers first enter, but then pressing wide and curling up once in the heat of him, keeping the thrust slow and evenly paced.

“I think—” Thomas says, shuddering over him, his pelvis rising up unevenly to meet Flint’s tongue. He’s close, Flint can tell. Nothing gets him going harder than his own mind, and Flint knows, even though he’d never admit it, but that first time with Silver had been one of the best lays of his life, too. “I think he expected — _fuck_ , I think he expected me to fuck him on his knees, hard and fast, but oh no. I wasn’t…. I wasn’t having that. I — I had him lie back in James’s arms, had James hold his legs up, hold him open while I fucked him slow, while I fucked him all night. God — fuck, he was so fucking _hot_ around me, so tight, and Christ — his _eyes_ — ah, James!”

His hips pump one more time before he comes, hand tight in Flint’s hair. Flint swallows everything eagerly, swallowing until there’s nothing left. This isn’t unfamiliar either. When Thomas used to direct them, he’d either always come first or last, depending on the success of the rest of the day. On good days, he could last ages. Considering the stress of today, however, Flint knows he needed to come quick, set his heart upright, so he could relax and enjoy the rest of the night.

Beside him, Madi starts moaning higher, in short, frantic bursts, her own hips jerking wildly into Silver’s face. She leans back with one long groan, her chest shining and heaving. She finally releases Silver’s hair, her legs slowly settling back down, her thighs still twitching.

Silver leans back as much as he can, still impaled on Flint’s fingers. His face is wet, his gaze lost, his grip on Flint’s thigh sharp, his ass clenching around Flint’s fingers. He’s never looked more beautiful.

He looks at them all, panting, and says, voice hoarse, “ _Please._ ”

Thomas leans on Madi’s shoulder. They’re not as close as the rest of them are, but right now they’re breathing hard in sync. Thomas presses his lips softly against her cheek and asks her, “Do you want to see for yourself that look in his eyes when he gets fucked?”

Madi is already nodding. “Yes,” she says. “ _Yes._ ” On shaky limbs, the two of them shift up on the bed, Thomas finally abandoning his trousers to the floor.

Slowly, Flint withdraws his fingers from Silver, stomach lurching at the sad noise Silver makes. When Flint looks over at him, Silver is looking back. His face is still so dazed, his swollen lips open in religious awe. On quiet nights, Silver had confessed before how he’d hidden behind so many masks in his life, masks that had shattered time and again, masks he still tried to hold together with two hands over his face. He’d said the only moments he ever felt truly seen had been when Flint looked at him. No one, not even Madi, had ever glimpsed behind that mask as easily as Flint did, and still wanted to touch him anyway. Each time Flint’s gaze fell on his and didn’t look away, he’d said a piece of his mask fell away to dust as his foot. It used to bother him enough to make him sick, before, when they had been held so apart from each other by their own designs. Now, he found he minded less and less.

Flint looks. God, how he looks. He looks even in his dreams. He looks even as Silver can’t seem to take anymore just now and pulls him in by the hair. Flint holds his face while kisses him, looking with his fingers if he can’t see right. He tastes himself in the fresh split on his lip, and he tastes Thomas at the back of his throat, and he tastes Madi now underneath his tongue, and he tastes Silver everywhere else. He pulls him close, feeling everywhere he’s hard and everywhere he’s soft and warm. He looks with his hands on every part of him. He wants the only thing between them to be dust. Silver deserves for it all to be dust.

“Excuse me? Fearsome pirate captains threatening to weep there on the floor?” Thomas says. “Your presence is required.”

They pull apart. Flint’s a little surprised to see Silver’s eyes are wet, but he seems a little less overwhelmed than he had a moment ago. He smiles.

“I told you today we’ll be fine,” he says quietly.

Silver tells him lots of things. He tells him how he might murder his boss and get away with it. He tells him how to open himself up to the people around him. He tells him he understands, because he loves him.

“Thomas was really worried about you last night,” Flint tells him, just to see the tips of his ears turn pink in that way he likes.

“Oh, honest to God. He’s exaggerating!”

“Boys?"

Miranda used to call them that, too. Her boys.

Up on the bed, Thomas is lying beside Madi, whose hips are now propped up on a pillow, her legs open. The pattern on her skirt makes him dizzy, or maybe that’s the spread of her thighs.

She sees him looking and she smiles. “Another time, Captain. It has to be him tonight, and he needs you more, too.”

Flint helps Silver on the bed with an offered hand. He gets on all fours, looking a little unsure how to start.

“It’s best if he enters you first,” Thomas says gently, smoothing some of Silver’s hair behind his ear. “She’ll know what to do from there.”

Flint kisses down Silver’s spine, sliding his fingers back inside him. Madi’s looking him right in the eye, and Flint wonders if the pieces of his mask are slipping for her, too, because Silver hangs his head, groaning low.

“No,” Thomas says soothingly. He presses up against Silver. “Don’t hide from her. Let her see you. Tell her how it feels.”

Despite everything, Silver finds it in him to scowl. “You’re such a — oh, _God_ — you’re such a _prick._ ”

But Thomas the storyteller has hit his stride, and is no longer unsure of himself at Silver’s side. “Tell her how thick his fingers are, how perfect his calluses feel from the inside, how you never want him to stretch you open completely because you love that ache when he finally slides inside you.”

Silver pants, hanging on his every word, moving back on Flint’s fingers, but still he’s able to say, “Well I _would_ if only you would shut the fuck up for a second.”

Madi laughs again, showing all her teeth, so that it comes from a place deep inside her. “He’s far too verbal, Captain,” she says, eyeing Flint over her husband’s shoulder. “And I am impatient.”

Since she’s been away, she was only ever discussed in the context of Silver’s heartache. But God, how Flint had missed the way she spoke to him. It is always a language he can understand, and he loved the way _captain_ sounded in her mouth. So few people had ever grown to trust him based solely on his character. The trust in her eyes now sent his heart soaring.

He slowly withdraws his fingers, his whole body lurching again at Silver’s whine. He eases him forward until he’s over Madi, her leg spread before them. He can’t stop himself from rubbing Silver’s ass a few times, letting his nails drag over the pale flesh, and he can’t see Silver’s face in this position, but Madi smiles at whatever expression he makes.

Thomas could tell the story, Madi could oversee it all, but Flint has to lean into Silver’s ear and ask, “Are you ready?”

Silver’s frantic nod tickles the sensitive edge of his split lip. “Fuck, _please_ , Captain.”

The first time he’d ever felt the heat of the tropics, he’d only been in the Navy a year. It must have been a gradual rise in temperature as they sailed south, but he only remembers waking up one morning with a thick layer of sweat between him and his uniform. He’s gone out on deck to see the cloudless sky, the searing sun, the salt in the air like grit gathering in one’s eyes after sleeping too long or not enough. Summers in England could be warm, but Flint had never been that hot before. It had reached all the way into the marrow of his bones until he’d slowly simmered from the inside out. He’d loved it from the start.

That heat had almost been as good as the heat of Silver around his cock. He opens up so perfectly, easing back with a soft, keening cry.

He feels the weight of Madi and Thomas’s eyes watching them. He knows Madi is waiting for Silver to fill her, and the thought of fucking her _through_ Silver is almost enough to make Flint come just then.

But Thomas had wanted Madi to see Silver, and Flint wants to be sure she has the opportunity to really enjoy the view.

So he wraps his arm around Silver’s front and pulls him up, his back now flushed against Flint’s chest. He gives Silver a second to adjust to the new position, his ass clenching around him in a way that could make Flint go blind. After that second, he moves, fucking up into Silver with hard, even strokes.

Silver arches his back, his head resting on Flint’s shoulder so that every punched out moan goes directly into his ear. He clings to Flint’s arm as he pushes back on each thrust. “Fuck,” he gasps, and “ _Captain_ ,” he gasps, and Flint turns to kiss him messily, openly, exchanging breath for breath.

Suddenly, a set of hands run down his back. Another hand grazes his front. Thomas is just beside him now, hands wandering as he bites on Flint’s ear. In front of them, Madi is stroking Silver’s stomach, her other hand rubbing herself between her legs. She’s staring up at Silver, no longer looking as sated and composed as she had even when Silver had been fucking her with his tongue. She finally looks as desperate as the rest of them. Flint hasn’t come yet but he feels thoroughly satisfied already.

“ _Please_ ,” she says to Silver. “Don’t come yet. I need—”

Flint slows to a stop. It takes another second for Silver to stop, too. With a slight push on his back from Thomas, Flint tips them forward until Silver is back on all fours over her. His arms tremble and he clutches at the bed tightly, determined to do as she asks.

He needs a little assistance lining up, but there are more than enough hands to help him find his way. Flint can’t see to help, but he can see Madi’s face, can hear her gasp as Silver finally enters her. She looks back at Flint over his shoulder, and gives him the faintest nod, so he uses his own hips to slowly push Silver all the way inside her.

It takes them a moment to find the rhythm. Thomas is still flushed at their side, telling him when to go fast, harder, now slower, let them catch up, that’s it, perfect, you’re _perfect_. Silver’s hand falls over Thomas’s bad one resting on the bed and he grips it, until Thomas turns it over so their fingers slightly intertwine. Every time Flint thrusts forward into Silver, it’s Madi who is the loudest, the force of two men fucking her with one cock overwhelming, and she tips her head back on the bed as she comes again.

Silver is close behind her, beyond speech, beyond sound, his hair falling over his face as he tries to navigate between Madi’s cunt and Flint’s cock, rocking back and forward between the two like gunfire. But he doesn’t come until Madi brings her head back down and looks him in the eye, until Thomas squeezes his hand, until Flint grazes his neck and whispers, “ _That’s_ it.”

Silver clenches hard around Flint when he comes, his whole body shuddering through it. Madi’s holding onto his shoulders as he rides through it, and for some reason the sight of her hands digging into the hard planes of his shoulder blades is what tips Flint over the edge, his hold on Silver’s hips tight enough to bruise as he pumps up one more time and spills himself inside, his vision whitening.

When he’s able to see again, the only one that’s moved is Thomas, inching to the other side of the bed to give them room to collapse. Which they do, Flint sliding out of Silver and falling to the mattress, his head landing on Thomas’s hip. Silver follows suit, lying down beside him, except there’s only so much room on the bed, so he’s mostly on top of Flint. Madi stays where she is, but she lowers her skirt a little with a shaky hand.

They breathe. It’s the only sound in the room besides the crackle of the fire.

Silver’s eyes are closed, there’s sweat pooled in the hollow of his neck, and he’s heavy on Flint’s shoulder. Thomas starts stroking both of their heads. Madi eases her legs over Silver until her feet rest on Flint.

“You have lovely thighs,” she tells him, still sounding breathy.

“So I’ve been told,” Flint says, running his hand up her ankle.

Thomas, the most composed of them all, murmurs an agreement. He looks ridiculously pleased with himself, like DaVinci might have looked before his _Last Supper_. If Silver sees it, he’ll ruin the moment entirely by getting annoyed, so it’s fortunate his eyes are still closed as he waits for his senses to return.

Unfortunately, Thomas decides to ruin the moment himself by saying, “Sing us a song, Long.”

Without missing a beat, still unseeing, Silver starts, “ _When I was just a lad looking for my true vocation, my father said, ‘now son, this choice deserves deliberation…’_ ”

“Christ, no!” Flint exclaims. “Not that one!”

Silver peeks at him with one eye, grinning crookedly. Then he shuts them both again and sighs. “I keep hearing a song in this dream I always have. I can’t remember all the words, but it won’t leave me alone.”

“Sing what you remember,” Madi says.

Silver’s brow furrows. “I’m on the beach,” he says eventually. “You’re in the water. Someone touches my hand. And then…” He trails off, still blind, still thinking, and when he starts again his voice is smooth and low, the tune old and just a little off, “ _Fare thee well my own true love, and farewell for a while. I’m going away, but I’ll come again, if I go ten thousand miles… and the rocks may melt and the seas may burn, if I should not return…._ I can’t remember anymore.”

Again, the only sounds are exhales, the fire, the few crickets through the walls. Flint puts his hand over Silver’s stomach, feeling the warm, fluttery muscles under his palm.

“It sounds like it might be a sad song,” Madi says eventually. “But it’s nice.”

“Much better than your other songs,” Thomas agrees.

Then Madi moves — a bit haltingly at first, then more sure, sliding down to the floor. Suddenly, she lifts her legs onto the bed, so the soles of her feet are all they can see. She’s covered herself with her skirt.

“What are you doing?” Flint asks, but too exhausted to put much energy into the question.

“The women in my village swear this is the thing to do when one is trying to get pregnant,” Madi says.

“Oh,” says Flint.

And then it sounds like no one in the room is breathing, save Madi. The three men on the bed are all frozen as though a snowstorm had passed through the room.

“Pregnant?” Silver asks, his voice very high.

“With a _baby?”_ asks Thomas, equally high.

“I’m glad to see that Doctor is teaching you well, Tomcat,” Madi says drily from the floor.

“That’s wonderful,” says Flint, truly meaning it. He’s grinning, and can’t stop. “Congratulations.”

“There’s nothing to congratulate yet,” Madi says, sounding pleased. “But thank you.”

“A _baby?_ ” Thomas asks again.

Tentatively, as though approaching one of her island’s many traps, Silver rolls to peer over the end of the bed. “Um. Is it — I mean — with me? _Me?”_

 _“Him?”_ Thomas asks. Flint nudges him in the belly.

Madi’s voice is tentative, but grows stronger as she speaks. “I want your child. We’ll be apart, won’t we? And I want to be with you always. I want that tether between us never severed. I want a child, and I want yours.” She pauses. “You’re of course under no obligation—”

“No!” Silver grabs her leg. “I am. I mean. I do. I do want a child with you.” He says it again, in wonder. “I do want a child.”

“Well good,” she says. “I need an heir, after all.”

Then she says, “Perhaps I’ll travel back to Boston to give birth. We know a trustworthy doctor, after all.”

The bed, once more, is frozen in an avalanche of shock, decidedly from one corner of the bed this time.

“Me?” Thomas squeaks. “Me? Deliver a —”

“Baby,” Flint says helpfully.

Thomas jumps at the word. Then, he jumps all the way out of bed, Flint having to curl up behind Silver to avoid being stepped on.

“Deliver a baby? A _baby?_ I’ve never —! I don’t! I don’t even — _do I_ have a book? I might a — _deliver_ a baby? Me? Are you — I — Oh, I think I have a book. I’ve never even _seen_ a — Yes. There’s a book. There must be. Where —” He runs out of the room, naked as the day he was delivered.

“Does he realize there isn’t even a baby yet?” Madi asks.

“James!” he calls from the other apartment. “Where’s that one book?”

“Are you sure you want this?” Silver asks her quietly. “I mean, mine? You don’t even know…”

“It’s what I want,” Madi says. Once again, she smiles at Flint over Silver’s shoulder. “And it will be a lucky child, to have you all in its life. I can trust my child to learn from you how to live in this world.” She shivers, uncontrollably, and then scowls. “Damn this cold.” She slowly gets to her feet. “Where are all your blankets?”

“ _James!_ Where _is_ it? The _red_ one!”

“In the other apartment,” Silver answers her quietly, barely audible over Flint’s yell, “Check under the chair! By the window!”

She holds their chins in both hands for a moment, scratching at their beards, before leaving in search of warmth.

Silver rolls onto his back, Flint rising up on his elbow to look down at him. He’s staring at the ceiling, unblinking. Now that they’re alone, panic is clearly starting to settle in Silver like a colony.

“A child,” he says to the ceiling.

“I think you’ll be a great father,” Flint says, still grinning.

Silver looks at him incredulously. “What the fuck would make you think that?”

“Well. You took care of the crew very…  well.”

“Flint,” Silver says. “They all _died._ ”

He frowns. “Surely not _all…”_

Silver thinks for a moment before shrugging helplessly. “I’m drawing a blank.”

Flint kisses him, closed-mouth and sure. When he leans back again, Silver’s brow is still furrowed with worry, so he kisses him there, too. “You took care of me,” he says. “You kept me alive. You still are.”

“Well,” says Silver, tips of his ears going pink again. “I suppose, if I can keep _you_ alive, of all people, this child might stand a chance.”

In the other apartment, he can hear Madi and Thomas talking, their voices muffled. It sounds like he’s trying to get her to sit down. Flint can’t help but smile at it, their home feeling full and alive.

“I guess we’ve no choice but to think about the future, now,” Silver says.

Thomas thinks about them growing old together. Madi thinks about raising the next generation with them. Thomas plans to deliver a baby that doesn’t even exist yet, and save a community from a disease it doesn’t have. Madi plans to protect her people with a leader that doesn’t even exist yet, from a threat that might never go away. They’re already seeing ten thousand miles ahead, while Silver and Flint only ever see tomorrow. But that’s fine, because they seem willing and ready to wait for the others to catch up, always.

“I’m okay with just thinking about tonight,” Flint says, laying down on top of Silver and drawing him in. Right now, he’s good to just live in the moment.  

* * *

 


End file.
